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

by Xavier P. Hunter

“You seem agitated,” Dr. Zimmerman observed, nonplussed by the rough handling.

  “Bleep right I’m agitated,” Reggie snapped through gritted teeth. “Why can’t I get out of here?”

  The smile that Dr. Zimmerman forced onto his face was as fake as the world around them. “First of all, don’t worry; you’re fine. The hospital staff is taking care of everything back on the other side.”

  Reggie’s eyes widened. “Wait. What’s wrong with me?”

  “I said you’re fine,” Dr. Zimmerman assured him. “Valhalla West gave approval for extended login sessions due to the out-of-game care you’re receiving. You’re actually recovering from a minor follow-up procedure to one of your injuries.”

  Reggie gaped. “I had surgery while I was in here? What the bleep, doc?”

  “You showed no signs of distress or awareness of the procedure. We had an anesthesiologist on hand the whole time. At the slightest hint of discomfort, you’d have gone under as per normal.”

  “What’d they do to me?” Reggie’s hands went involuntarily to the spots along his abdomen where he’d awoken with new scars after the battlefield.

  Dr. Zimmerman held up his hands. “Nothing major. Just cleaned out some shrapnel that might have caused you troubles down the road.”

  “And you couldn’t have asked me first?” Reggie asked, glowering at the psychiatrist.

  “I’m your therapist,” Dr. Zimmerman replied. “If you want to bring it up with the brass and the medical corp, be my guest. However, as part of the agreement with Valhalla West, medical testing is being conducted under joint auspices. You’re currently under medical observation for side-effects stemming from your unique experience.”

  “Bleep.”

  “I agree. It’s bleep,” Dr. Zimmerman replied. “But in the meantime, this is probably the best post-op recovery ward I’ve seen since I had my tonsils out as a kid and ate ice cream for a week.” He patted Reggie on the shoulder.

  “So what do I do now?”

  Reggie was bereft. He’d never been stranded before, away from friends, family, his unit. A couple guys in the division had stories about getting cut off and waiting hours or days for backup. They were under fire, or at least the threat of fire, the whole time. Reggie was just playing a VR game. Who was he to complain?

  “Well, for starters, I’d say quit trying to log out,” Dr. Zimmerman said cheerfully. “We’ll pull you out or signal when you need to wrap up your mission and head back. Just immerse yourself in this lovely little teapot universe that Valhalla West built. Have fun.”

  Without preamble, Dr. Zimmerman took a quick step back and hit the control panel. The door slid closed, separating the two of them.

  “Hey, wait!”

  But when Reggie opened the door from his side, the doctor was gone.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The rally hadn’t come a moment too soon.

  House Virgo was under attack on Meyang, a world more blue than green but otherwise not that different from Earth. It was one of the faction’s major civilian residential world’s and a commercial hub that paid for things like mission rewards and command-ship fuel. If House Virgo let the capital city get sacked, the whole faction would be getting a -20 percent penalty on income of all sorts for the next in-game week.

  There was no limit on juggernauts or pilots for this mission; it was all hands on deck. Anyone who wanted in had been given ten minutes to report to House Virgo’s largest drop ship.

  Reggie had rounded up the Four Stooges and gotten there in under five.

  Now an entire division of House Virgo juggernauts filtered out into the city to take up defensive positions. Reggie couldn’t help gawking as he led his NPC platoon out into the streets.

  It was as if an architectural dream had sprawled from some “city of tomorrow” lecture and out into the game world. The scope said New York City while the fanciful statues and parks suggested Paris. But Reggie had never seen a city crisscrossed with pedestrian bridges and transport tubes at all elevations, nor had he ever been to a city where aerial traffic seemed like the norm rather than the exception.

  Despite the invasion sirens blaring and looping public speakers booming “evacuate to underground shelters, this is not a drill,” there were still light aircraft aplenty flitting about below the tops of the skyscrapers. The autopilot guided Reggie toward a defensive position he’d been assigned with his platoon. He was busy sightseeing.

  What a world this would be to live in.

  Reggie wondered idly whether the NPCs inside had jobs and families and favorite television shows or whether it was nothing more than an elaborate facade where the only parts that moved were the parts a player was looking at.

  Valhalla West couldn’t possibly simulate a whole universe, after all. Could they?

  Reggie’s radar alert startled him from his reverie. He’d gotten close enough to the city’s edge that he was the first to spot the enemy force closing in.

  The radar lit with a scattering of blips. As the enemy advanced, more and more appeared at the utmost range of his sensors. They just didn’t seem to stop coming.

  “Oh, bleep.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  [Primary Objective: Destroy Enemy Juggernauts 0/???]

  [Primary Objective: Limit Civilian Casualties 0/?,???,???]

  Reggie hadn’t noticed before that the number of questions marks gave an indication of the size of the number he wasn’t seeing. Right about then, he wasn’t too fond of that third squiggly punctuation mark in the number of enemy juggernauts. At least a hundred; fewer than a thousand. At some point, he supposed, the exact count was moot. Either they had a plan to defend the city against greater numbers, or they didn’t.

  Specker’s voice came over the radio. He was in command again as head commander of House Virgo’s forces—also, he was the highest level. “All right, lads and ladies. House Risun is looking for a little trouble today. We’re going to give it to them. Every man, woman, and child of Colfield is going to be counting on you, personally, to keep them safe. This isn’t a battle for glory, honor, or bloodlust. This is about preventing a HUGE debuff to our income for the upcoming week. I don’t know about you, but running an Elephant with full insurance isn’t cheap. Now let’s spread out and mow down some opposition forces without taking any crippling penalties for civilian deaths.”

  Reggie had heard better, but a good commander had to know what motivated his troops. The looming credit debuff was kind of bullshit. What about all the poor House Virgo players who had already logged off for the night? What about the ones who were out on missions and not eligible to pitch in?

  There were parallels to the inherent unfairness of war in the real world, but this was a game. Fairness seemed like a better policy than realism in this instance.

  “Bogeys incoming,” someone radioed in on a channel that included Reggie’s platoon. “Sector T119.”

  Reggie checked his map and realized there were buildings blocking his view of the approaching force. It would be vital to share intel on this mission with so many disparate views of the battle.

  “C’mon, you lug nuts,” Reggie radioed his platoon. He punctuated his order by pinging exactly on the mini-map where he intended to rendezvous.

  Missiles whizzed past, slamming into a skyscraper a dozen stories overhead. Glass rained down into the streets as smoke poured from the building. In his Wolverine, Reggie jogged to the corner of the skyscraper and peered around, aiming the juggernaut’s left arm and Beam Cannon-L in case there were targets to be found.

  Lo and behold, a pair of enemy juggernauts was marching down the road from the north. Reggie’s crosshairs bracketed the leftmost.

  [Titan[7] - 88% To Hit]

  “Well, aren’t you a big boy,” Reggie muttered as he pulled the trigger. The Titan was a 105-ton behemoth meant to stand at the fore of an invading force because it could withstand the punishment a vanguard force was bound to take.

  4 points of damage melted off the armor of the Titan�
��s right leg. Barely a scratch in the grand scheme of things. But it was better than pouring wasted fire into the thing’s torso. At least wearing down at the leg, Reggie and his platoon might disable the juggernaut before it mowed them down.

  Vortex ducked back around the corner as Titan[7] and Titan[8] took aim. Shards of glass and steel blew past Reggie like buckshot as return fire bit through the corner of the building he was using as cover.

  Standing behind him, the Four Stooges parked at the rendezvous point, calmly awaiting orders.

  “Take cover. Return fire. Fire at will. Target Titans 7 and 8,” Reggie rattled off, having found that type of combo ordering most effective at getting the Four Stooges to perform combat actions that were a net positive in helping his side win.

  Reggie quickly squelched the radio before the inevitable choir of inane catchphrases warbled through. The last thing he needed was his own platoon getting on his nerves.

  Missiles swerved and twisted, snaking trails of propellant smoke in their wakes as the Four Stooges opened fire with a barrage that was probably even within the optimal range of their missiles.

  Still in cover, Reggie used a relay from Mogh’s tactical computer to watch the wire frames of Titan[7] and Titan[8]. Scattered flecks of yellow pockmarked the heavy juggernauts.

  [Primary Objective: Limit Civilian Casualties 1,000/?,???,???]

  “King!” Specker shouted into his radio to the point where the distortion whined a piercing note that made Reggie wince. “Bad enough letting these bleeps kill our people. Don’t you be killing them, too.”

  “Sorry, sir,” Reggie radioed back. “NPCs have minds of their own.”

  It sounded lame even saying it. With the all-hands nature of the order, he figured more warm bodies and walking juggernauts would have been a welcome addition to the House Virgo efforts. Apparently, he might have been better off leaving them behind.

  “Get those idiots out of my battle,” Specker ordered. “Now!”

  Reggie gulped. “Yes, sir.”

  Across the massive battlefield, there were mission updates of enemy juggernauts doing down. Less frequent were updates on the civilian death tally.

  “Mogh, LaTrie, Shen, Jonto, engage Titan[7] at point-blank range. Focus fire on the legs,” Reggie ordered. He switched to the command channel. “Specker, I won’t last long against these two Titans once my suicide squad gets eaten alive. Could use a little backup.”

  “Understood,” Specker replied.

  Reggie watched in morbid fascination as the Titans took his NPC platoon mates to pieces. LaTrie lost an arm in a single shot. Something that hit Shen ran up damage on his torso armor like a racecar’s digital speedometer, culminating in it boring a hole through his cockpit. Mogh closed to melee range with Titan[8] and his juggernaut went over in a heap. Three quick blows to the head suggested that the Titan stomped it out of commission. Jonto turned Titan[7]’s leg armor to red and almost burned through it before his juggernaut’s wire frame went black on Reggie’s screen.

  “Well,” he muttered to a platoon channel that no longer had any other listeners. “That was quick.”

  The ground shook. At first, Reggie assumed it was the two Titans coming for him since he distinctly made out four booming feet impacting in a rhythm. But instead it was Specker.

  Specker’s Elephant was a city with legs. The quadruped juggernaut was 190 tons and carried armament that cripple Reggie’s Wolverine even with a glancing blow. As it passed the corner of Reggie’s bunker skyscraper, he couldn’t help cheating a little to get a firsthand view of the carnage.

  Titan[7] and Titan[8] both opened fire with Mass Drivers. One scored a solid shot in the Elephant’s torso. The other glanced off an angled section of armor. The Elephant jerked under both impacts but otherwise showed no sign of being bothered. The wire frame on Reggie’s console only showed the Elephant barely edge into the yellow range after taking 12 points of damage.

  It was the first time Reggie had seen a Heavy Plasma Launcher fire. He hadn’t seen Specker’s Elephant in action during his first, chaotic mission—or at least hadn’t been aware enough to know what was going on.

  Twin bolts of superheated exotic matter shot out of the Elephant’s arms with a sound like lightning trapped in a bottle. Both were clean hits to Titan[7], chopping the already-injured leg out from under it.

  Titan[8] returned fire with a battery of Beam Cannon-S that raked scorch marks along the Elephant’s frontal armor. The damage added up but not to a number Specker would need to worry about.

  Since he was exposed anyway, Reggie added supporting fire of his own.

  [Titan[8] - 90% To Hit]

  Two Beam Cannon-Ms fired and one struck the Mass Driver of Titan[8]. The other glanced harmlessly off a reflective surface, doing no damage.

  “Thought you were going to sit this one out,” Specker observed, advancing on the remaining upright Titan while taking a path that let him stomp the downed one into the XP column.

  [Primary Objective: Destroy Enemy Juggernauts 17/???]

  With nothing to fear from Titan[8]’s damaged Mass Driver, Specker walked right up to it and grappled the smaller juggernaut. Despite the difference in size, the Titan was too slow to back away from the Elephant.

  Now Reggie did just watch.

  He had no interest in engaging with his own commander in the line of fire. He was, however, very interested in seeing that beast of a combat machine in action.

  Specker lifted the enemy juggernaut clear off the ground, pinning one of its arms helplessly against its body. There was no way for it to bring any weapon to bear without melting itself in the process.

  The Titan’s wire frame showed massive damage all throughout the internal structure, even though the damage to the armor was minimal. When the Elephant released its grasp, Titan[8] had been neutralized.

  [Primary Objective: Destroy Enemy Juggernauts 21/???]

  The rest of House Virgo wasn’t idle. The battle raged across the city as House Risun forces continued to pour into the city. Reggie fell in behind Specker and picked off targets of opportunity as the Elephant kept the streets clear of heavy juggernauts.

  [Primary Objective: Destroy Enemy Juggernauts 35/???]

  The battle felt like something out of a horror movie. The House Risun juggernauts kept appearing on the mini-map. Every time their side eliminated one, two more popped up to replace it.

  It was almost surreal.

  There was no sense of advanced strategic planning, no spearhead, no crisis of morale when their headlong charge failed to gain them a solid foothold to consolidate. Had he been House Risun’s commander, Reggie would have called off the assault long before now. Unless Risun’s reserves were as endless as they appeared, they’d eventually stall and be wiped out.

  “King, that Wolverine got a command sensor package installed?” Specker asked as they thundered down one of the city’s open thoroughfares. A platoon of light juggernauts zipped across their path like a flock of school kids playing tag at recess, no rhyme or reason to their heedless haste.

  “Yessir,” Reggie replied at once.

  “Take that elevated freeway ramp or whatever it is over there and get us a birds-eye view.”

  “Roger that,” Reggie radioed back. It was the first sign that Specker might be a ruthless sonovabitch since Reggie had paired up with him. Up on an elevated highway, Reggie would be at risk of someone blowing out the support pylons, and he’d be completely exposed to missile fire. But it would be a good tactical position for assessing the overall flow of the battle.

  The ramp probably wasn’t meant for everyday traffic, just based on the lack of signage or markings. Considering the level of detail elsewhere in the city, from civilian vehicles lining the road to daily specials listed in cafe windows, it seemed an unlikely oversight. Probably some sort of cargo route or an affectation for the city’s aesthetic.

  From thirty stories up, Reggie paced a level section of the ram complex. The section beneath him was supported betwee
n a pair of hundred-story buildings, allowing Vortex at least some semblance of cover from firing positions down below.

  [Gargoyle - 99% To Hit]

  Reggie smirked. One advantage of being up here was a prime vantage and range for raining MRM-2s at House Risun forces. Reggie flicked on the target lock and released a salvo.

  [Primary Objective: Destroy Enemy Juggernauts 65/???]

  TARGET DATA SHARED

  With one more juggernaut out of the way, Reggie was willing to share his cupcakes with the rest of the class. He didn’t even have the ammo to take on everything he saw, and he preferred keeping out of the line of fire for laser-to-laser combat, now that he had his head around the scope of this invasion.

  “Nice work, King,” Specker radioed on a private channel. “We could use a dozen more like you.”

  “Thanks, sir.”

  A shot from a Mass Driver punctured the building beside Vortex like it was made of graham cracker.

  [Primary Objective: Limit Civilian Casualties 18,000/?,???,???]

  “But don’t you ever bring NPC pilots to one of my city defenses again. You hear me?” Specker snarled.

  Reggie swallowed. “Loud and clear, sir.” Still, it was a good sign that Specker was willing to chew him out just a little. No commander worth his fancy lapel decorations would risk troop morale during combat.

  Specker considered this engagement won.

  Reggie took the time to sigh… and maybe duck out of the way before that Mass Driver reloaded, whoever was firing it at him.

  [Mission Successful - 3030 XP - 0Cr]

  The lack of a payday shocked him until he realized that the looting and pillaging had just begun. This wasn’t a mission for hire; it had been a defense of House Virgo’s financial future. The credits were lying all over the battlefield, embodied in the smoking ruins of enemy juggernauts.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Back aboard the command ship, spirits were high. Reggie’s share of the salvage was 11,550Cr—a figure pro-rated by his level. Plenty of the other pilots had gotten piles more. There had also been bonuses that he had lost eligibility for by being the commander of a platoon that was otherwise wiped out.