Each was being paid 3500Cr to wipe GlanStar Tech off this moon.
Zeevius Industries had some corporate beef that the Star League courts had tied up for years. They were taking more direct action, content that the aftermath likewise would take years to sort out.
[Primary Objective: Destroy All GlanStar Facilities 0/13]
[Primary Objective: Destroy Enemy Juggernauts 0/75]
Straightforward. Reggie was in the mood for that. The strangers all around him in their motley assortment of juggernauts could well have been NPCs for all he knew or cared. June was the only person Reggie had interacted with while aboard the Meritorious. And she wasn’t here.
Vortex strolled out amid the heavy juggernauts, keeping to the back with the slower pilots. He was a borderline case anyway, and there wasn’t a whole lot of organizational structure in place. The battalion was under the command of a guy named Kegmeister. It wasn’t the most reassuring handle, but the guy was a Level 15 Commander. If nothing else, he’d be providing some nice bonuses.
It was night out. The moon was awash in planet light from the gas giant it orbited. With no atmosphere, there were no clouds to mar the night sky.
Tremors that came up through Vortex’s feet, coupled with its own steady gait, were the only signs of the juggernauts all around marching toward the battlefield. It was eerie, now that Reggie was used to the sounds of juggernauts in the field, not to be able to hear them thundering across the landscape. It made the view out his windshield less real, somehow, even though it would have been less realistic to have sound carry without air.
“Fan out, bleeps,” Kegmeister radioed to the battalion. He had the nasally voice of a guy who spent his life indoors because of allergies. “We’re here to deliver a message. We’ve got these bleeps outgunned like a bleeping bleep. I don’t want any bleeping amateur bleep out there. No looting until the objectives are green. No friendly fire. I’m not putting up with that bleep out here.”
On the mini-map, Reggie was seeing blips appear as the light juggernauts swept the battlefield ahead of them.
TARGET DATA RECEIVED
The message popped up over and over as individual pilots reported in.
Reggie had to swipe through the battalion roster for the mission. He selected a couple nearby lights, his two nearest neighbors, and Kegmeister to pin to his console display.
The only impressive juggernaut in the bunch was Kegmeister’s Lion class heavy. It packed a pair of IDF Artillery Cannon-240s and an array of missiles. Clearly, Kegmeister was the sort who liked to command a battle from the rear.
The hostile blips on the mini-map were moving, clustering toward what appeared on overhead view to be defensive positions. It would be hard to say until Reggie got into visual range to see the available cover for the defenders.
[Mission Update: Player Force Arrived for Defenders]
[Primary Objective: Destroy Enemy Juggernauts 0/76]
“Hah!” Kegmeister scoffed into his radio. “Some bleepy little slapper is planning to hold off 90 juggernauts by himself?”
While Reggie realized that the enemy contingent had only increased by one, a total of 76 juggernauts hardly counted as being alone.
The vanguard forces started engaging the enemy. GlanStar seemed to have little in the way of fixed defensive weaponry, relying solely on juggernauts for defense. Reggie wondered how many of the NPC pilots were even regular GlanStar employees versus mercenaries like him.
“Just like corporations,” Reggie said with the radio off. “Two sides just throwing money and other people’s lives at each other.”
[Primary Objective: Destroy Enemy Juggernauts 3/76]
[Primary Objective: Destroy Enemy Juggernauts 5/76]
A smirk curled the edge of Reggie’s mouth. Player or no player, the odds were in favor of Zeevius Industries’ mercenary force. If he was going to be a soldier of fortune, at least he had the sense to pick a winning side.
[Primary Objective: Destroy Enemy Juggernauts 6/77]
Reggie blinked at the upgrade, hardly registering that he was nearly in range to open fire on a cluster of Vultures. The number of defenders had gone up.
[Primary Objective: Destroy Enemy Juggernauts 6/78]
It happened again.
Missile fire snapped Reggie’s attention away from the mission updates. He’d taken 4 points of damage to his frontal torso armor. Aiming his left laser, he identified the juggernaut that had fired at him by the strangely dispersing smoke trail in the barren lunar landscape.
[Vulture[4] - 77% To Hit]
Reggie steadied his aim until the number rose above 90 percent, then fired. Lasers worked fine, it seemed, even though his Beam Cannon-M was barely audible. Only the reverberations that carried through his own hull reached the cockpit.
Beside Reggie, a Kestrel limped past, fleeing the front lines as the situation grew too hot for its lack of armor. But a trio of missiles streaked by in pursuit. The Kestrel collapsed and the battalion roster decreased by one.
[Primary Objective: Destroy Enemy Juggernauts 8/79]
A knot twisted in Reggie’s stomach. Something was wrong here. He was already turning Vortex’s torso to get a better look at the trashed Kestrel when it started to rise to its feet.
The cockpit was vented to vacuum. Its torso was a hollowed-out husk barely holding the limbs together. Yet, ungainly as a newborn calf, it struggled to its feet and wobbled around to bring its weapons to bear on Reggie.
Still not quite believing what he was seeing, it took a blast from the Kestrel’s Beam Cannon-S for Reggie to grasp that the light juggernaut was no longer on his side.
[Kestrel - 95% To Hit]
The pathetic thing could barely stand up. It was like an extra from one of those old WWII movies, the valiant, nameless soldier who volunteered to stay behind so the hero could retreat. Arm bleeding, he propped his rifle on a sand bag to make a final stand.
Except this wasn’t heroic. It was something from a techno-horror movie, not a war biopic.
Reggie pulled the trigger, and a blast from Vortex’s Plasma Launcher scattered the Kestrel like a broken action figure.
[Primary Objective: Destroy Enemy Juggernauts 9/79]
Reggie’s mouth went dry. Even though it went against the operational procedure set down during the terse pre-mission briefing, he opened his radio to the battalion-wide frequency. “Destroy all downed units. Repeat, destroy all downed units. Hostiles are taking over any jug with a dead pilot and operating it on remote. Those new enemy units showing up in the mission updates are—”
“Cut the chatter,” Kegmeister snapped. “We get it, noob. Someone’s got a kind of crazy hacking rig or something. Smells quest-reward to me. Or legendary research lab loot.”
[Primary Objective: Destroy Enemy Juggernauts 12/83]
[Primary Objective: Destroy Enemy Juggernauts 14/86]
Reggie found himself doing math every time another update came in. They weren’t just losing juggernauts to the enemy, the hostile force was actually growing during the battle, recruiting downed friendlies faster than Reggie and company were destroying them.
Heart pounding, Reggie waded into the fray. He prioritized visually damaged units since there was no clear way to tell former friend from battle-long foe. But the dead juggernauts went down quick and easy for the most part. There was a Titan that took two Plasma Launcher blasts before going down, and a Ferret that managed to evade a couple shots before Reggie finally put it down.
[Primary Objective: Destroy Enemy Juggernauts 32/119]
Despite the mounting enemy casualties, this was turning into a rout. “Hey, boss,” Reggie radioed to Kegmeister, remembering to go through the chain of command, scarce as it was on links at the moment. “You seeing how bad this is going?”
“If I can take out five more before we retreat, I’ll level up,” Kegmeister replied sourly. “Just hang in another couple minutes.”
“Roger that,” Reggie replied.
Like hell.
&n
bsp; Ever more often, Reggie had to tell himself that this wasn’t the army anymore. Kegmeister was a guy sleeping off a night of playing computer games while awake. This wasn’t life or death; these weren’t even brothers in arms. Kegmeister’s reaction to the turn of the battle certainly wasn’t a sign that Reggie owed the guy any loyalty.
Suddenly, the face of a juggernaut appeared in Reggie’s HUD, taking up most of his field of vision. Involuntarily, he recoiled from the screen. “Greetings, warriors,” a gravelly, digitally scrambled voice echoed in the cockpit. “I am The Mechromancer. Soon I will be adding you to the ranks of my personal army. None shall escape my wrath.”
The juggernaut’s visage was indistinct. Black paint blended with shadow along smooth surfaces with subtle features. Only the glint of reflection from a cockpit gave it any distinct contrast, like the visor on a full-face helmet.
Well, Reggie wasn’t sticking around to test that wrath escape theory of this crazy player. If the bastard wanted to go all Psy Ops on them and break the invaders’ will to fight, kudos to him. Reggie wasn’t that keen on sticking this one out already.
Vortex turned ponderously. For the first time since buying the Wolverine, Reggie wished he’d found someplace to stuff a couple more points into Piloting. Other juggernauts near the rear of the battle turned as well, firing in a semblance of an organized retreat. More likely, they were looking for a few more points of XP before gathering up their soiled trousers and ditching this moon.
[Primary Objective: Destroy Enemy Juggernauts 36/135]
Reggie was halfway back to the drop ship when the order came in. “All units, fall back,” Kegmeister radioed. Reggie wondered whether he’d gotten his five kills or just ran out of resolve. He decided that it didn’t matter. “We will hold out until the last moment to depart. But anyone not on board when I get there is working without a net.”
Gritting his teeth, Reggie realized that Kegmeister was going to hold the drop ship until he was personally on board. He was the second one aboard, only behind an Otsu that had survived the initial scouting and blown past Vortex during the retreat.
Reggie picked out a prime location at the back of the drop ship and locked his Wolverine into the shipping restraints.
The drop ship rocked with missile fire.
With a quick check to make sure his radio was well and truly off, Reggie growled. “You greedy bleep. You’d better not get us all stranded down here and deleted.”
He wasn’t even sure where he’d wake up if he died out here. A neutral Star League hospital, maybe?
On his battalion view, Reggie watched as Kegmeister’s Titan took a punishing barrage. All along his rear armor, from head to legs, everything was in the red—the low, low red.
The battalion commander stopped and swung his juggernaut around. At first, Reggie thought that Kegmeister had grown a backbone and was going to hold off the enemy long enough for the drop ship to hit orbit. But no, Kegmeister merely turned to face his most substantial and intact armor toward the incoming fire.
Kegmeister was backing toward the drop ship at half speed—his only hope of making it at all.
The thought crossed Reggie’s mind of unlocking from the shipping restraints. He could squeeze past the influx of refugee invaders piling aboard, lock onto Kegmeister’s weakened armor with a few volleys of missiles, and thus place someone else in charge of the mission. Whoever was highest-ranking survivor was bound to give the immediate order to depart.
Reggie would, in point of fact, be a sort of hero.
The drop ship shook again. The hits were coming more frequently.
Removing his hands from the controls of Vortex, Reggie folded his arms and pinned his hands against his chest. No. He wasn’t going to shoot a comrade. He wouldn’t shoot a commanding officer—not even one who was being a dipshit. Reggie wasn’t going to be responsible either way.
Either they got away, or they died on this mission.
“It’s not real. It’s not real. It’s not real…” he repeated as a mantra, closing his eyes.
The drop ship shuddered, but this time it was different. They were taking off.
[Mission Failed]
“Well,” Kegmeister radioed to the survivors. “Any invasion you can walk away from is a good invasion. Let’s just chalk this up to—”
The Mechromancer’s juggernaut visage appeared once again, and the audio feed drowned out Kegmeister like the MC at a rock concert once the band took the stage. “You think you’ve escaped me? I will be your personal ruin. The last juggernaut you see before I destroy you will be one of your former allies. Your armored souls are mine and mine alone. I will not be denied.”
As the drop ship headed back for the mercenary transport, Reggie felt a whole lot less comfortable about having gotten out of there alive.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Reggie set his mug back on the bar top. There was no sound in the world that quite mimicked the sound of glass on wood polished to within an inch of its life. Armored Souls had nailed it.
He sighed. Still too sober.
There was a game of football being broadcast on a big screen over the bar. Not real world, but some souped-up steroidal brawl with two sides fighting and a ball lost in the scrum. Another of Valhalla West’s game offerings cross-promoting.
Holding up a hand, Reggie caught the bartender’s attention. “Another.”
June had been gone by the time they got back. There was no in-game tracking system to tell him where, and he didn’t have the nerve to send her a message and ask.
“Missed my chance,” he muttered aloud without meaning to.
“Everyone misses a chance now and then,” a pilot in a dark green flight suit commented, dragging a chair from one of the tables over to the end of the bar and taking a seat straddling it, leaning on the back rest. “Drinking never brings ‘em back.”
Reggie sized up the pilot. He was rough-cut, pudgy in the face but not in the body, with a chin-strap beard. Then Reggie remembered that this could be a ten-year-old kid, a con, or someone’s grandma and he’d never know by looking at him. “Do I know you?”
“We were on the drop ship when it took off,” the green-suited pilot said, signaling to the barkeep to bring him a beer. “I was in the Wyvern.”
“Oh, that was you,” Reggie replied, vaguely aware that a Wyvern-class juggernaut might have been on board.
The football game on the bar screen flickered, replaced with the juggernaut visage of The Mechromancer. Instantly, a hush fell over the bar; even the jazz stopped playing.
“I see you,” The Mechromancer growled in his scrambled voice. “If you thought you could escape me by fleeing this moon, you are sorely mistaken. I will hunt. I will find you. I will… consume you.”
The image flickered again, and the football game picked up in progress. Jazz music filtered down from the speakers scattered throughout the bar. Conversations picked up again—including Reggie’s, to his dismay.
“Hey, I couldn’t help but notice you were solo,” the pilot commented. “Was thinking maybe you might want to join up with the Reptillian Assembly. We’ve got 34 members—35 if you come aboard. Most of our—”
Reggie stopped him with an upraised hand. “Not to… well, to blow you off, I’m not interested. I just quit my last faction, and I’m not looking to—”
“Noob factions don’t count,” the pilot in green said hurriedly, like a used car salesman sensing a buyer slipping off the hook. “We know how to treat players. This mercenary, amateur-hour TPK business is bush league. Most of the Reptillian Assembly is offline right now, so I was just—”
“Less life story, buddy; more moving along,” Reggie said. He wasn’t a surly drunk; was just the regular, too-sober-for-his-own-liking surly. A soldier at an off-base bar usually wasn’t there alone. Reggie was used to having a little backup if things started looking ugly. He’d never been in a bar fight, but he’d been close on enough occasions that he’d appreciated having a few guys from his unit around.
<
br /> Right then, Reggie was alone.
“You know what?” Reggie said, holding out a conciliatory hand as the glad-hander for the Reptillian Who-The-Hell-Cares started to stand. “You stay. I’ll leave.”
Sometimes a drunk in a bar can be the most profound sort of philosopher a guy could hope to find. Other times, the annoyance of dealing with them was enough to put your own troubles in perspective.
Reggie carried his beer with him, draining the last of it just before he reached the exit. As he traversed the doorway, he watched the glass dematerialize right along with his buzz. It was one of those little wonders he hoped never to grow accustomed to.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Reggie stood at the feet of Vortex, staring up. The Wolverine rose above like a colossus. It wasn’t the largest of the juggernauts in the hangar, nor was it the strongest. But it was Reggie’s.
So was Daisy, but that wasn’t nearly so poetic.
There was nothing Reggie wanted at the moment besides the ability to take Vortex out into a battle, carry out a mission, and come home in one piece. For once, everyone coming back from a mission would be nice.
With guys like Kegmeister out there leading missions, it wasn’t liable to be a frequent occurrence.
With a sigh of admiration that he usually reserved for the views at National Parks, Reggie tore his gaze off his juggernaut and browsed the upgrade kiosk.
Even after the disastrous mission, he’d managed to bank 41,000Cr. Some of it was bonuses. Some of it had been salvage. The Plasma Launcher was a short-to-medium range weapon, but it was brutally effective once he was in range. The savings on long-range missiles alone was worth the cost of the upgrade.
He could easily have taken the Vortex out into battle with the Beam Cannon-M and LRM-2 package he’d heard about. Some egghead like Chase had claimed it was the optimal build for a Wolverine, covering long- and medium-range encounters. But the Plasma Launcher got him into the fray and packed more bunch than a beam cannon.
As Reggie swiped past weapon system after weapon system, he wondered what the change would be from the style he was learning to appreciate. The thing was, he wasn’t unhappy with Vortex’s performance. There were certainly parts he could upgrade, but nothing that he knew he’d like within his price range.
Dead Mech Walking: a mech LitRPG novel (Armored Souls Book 1) Page 19
