Reggie nodded a thanks for stalling the barrage of suggestions. “Any other questions?”
ZRod crossed his arms and looked down the line at his fellow newcomers, then over at the old guard of Wounded Legion. “Yeah. When we gonna shoot shit? I didn’t come for pep talks. I came to fight.”
Reggie knew that this wasn’t going to be a gradual introduction. The gamers he’d met in Armored Souls were here to blow off steam and pump some adrenaline through their sleeping minds, not build a life and career. He was ready with a mission pre-selected for a night out.
“Saddle up, cowboys and cowgirls,” Reggie announced. “There’s a shooting gallery on Pathex III tonight.”
Since there was no harm in spoiling the surprise, Reggie even pushed the mission announcement early to everyone.
[Primary Objective: Destroy Enemy Juggernauts 0/225]
All around the hangar, eyes went wide—all except for June and Chase’s. They’d helped him pick this one.
“You guys like congested battlefields and old, retrofitted juggernauts? Well, tonight’s your lucky night.”
Chapter Fifteen
The following night, the soldiers of Wounded Legion logged back in, spirits high. The prior night’s entertainment had been both a lark and a gauge by which to measure his new team. They’d salvaged more than they could cram aboard the drop ship, earned enough XP for Rich and Thatchet to level up, and gotten to know one another.
Charlie Platoon was under ZRod’s command, consisting of him, Compton, Thatchet, Reese, and a quirky little guy who called himself Mapple—which he insisted could either be pronounced like the syrup-bearing tree or the popular pie-filling fruit.
If the shooting-range mission on Pathex III had been a litmus test, Charlie Platoon had passed. They’d earned the right to come along for this next mission.
[Primary Objective: Force the Surrender of Turrim Auream Starport to Wounded Legion]
Reggie’s pulse quickened as the drop ship docked at the starport. This was a new kind of mission for him. There would be no open skies, no wide plains, not even a cityscape. And this was also the first time that a mission was starting with a lie.
A traffic controller contacted them as the station latched on. “Wounded Legion vessel, you are clear to disembark. Enjoy your stay on Turrim Auream.”
Situated on the X-112A space lane, Turrim Auream was a trading hub. It boasted a refueling station, a bazaar, and night-life options ranging from the low-class to the debauched. It produced nothing of its own, merely converting its existence and location into a lucrative business as a place to meet, trade, and relax. Thus far, it seemed to cater mainly to NPC factions.
Today, they were going to meet some players.
“Thanks, traffic control,” Reggie replied, patching the drop ship’s radio through the cockpit of Vortex. The station’s scanners weren’t rated for hull penetration, so they had no way to tell that there were 15 juggernauts waiting to storm in. “We hope to make ourselves feel right at home.”
Reese called over the division frequency. “Maybe don’t tell them we’re planning something?”
Chase giggled. “The AI’s too stupid to pick up on that shit.”
Reggie cast a knowing glance at the projector where ASHARI was known to pop up but kept quiet. Most of the Armored Souls’ AIs were idiots. Not all.
The loading ramp of the drop ship yawned open. The freight bay outside peered in, lit by dated-looking fluorescent lighting.
“All right. You all have your assignments,” Reggie radioed out. “We have no idea who or what is on the other ships docked here. There are 12 docking arms to secure, plus the station’s security hub and manager’s office. About 80 percent of this place is juggernaut-friendly. Ellie and June will be on foot to take out the infantry support at the security hub—just rent-a-cops, really. I’ll negotiate the manager’s surrender.”
There were no questions for once. It was amazing.
“Move out!”
Wounded Legion juggernauts charged out of the drop ship in a jumble. Smaller, lighter units squirmed their way to the front and darted off to the more distant parts of the station. Only Frank hung back. As the slowest, heaviest juggernaut, he was assigned rear guard duty, watching over the drop ship. Dock 7 was his.
Reggie made his way to the station core. This wasn’t a job he was looking forward to, but it was his responsibility. Ellie and June could reach the security hub faster than him, and Ellie in particular would be invaluable in neutralizing the station’s police force. She had been right: not every mission was suited to jamming as many gunners in a platoon as possible and winning a fire fight. This mission wouldn’t have been possible without someone with good shooting skills leading the charge internally.
“Got a ship trying to disengage,” Chase radioed from Dock 6. “Fire or let ‘em run?”
“Fire,” Reggie said. “We’ll pay for the repairs. Cut power to the docking clamps, and keep them here.”
“Roger that,” Chase replied.
On the mini-map, Reggie saw Wounded Legion take up positions at each docking arm as the closer and faster juggernauts arrived at their assigned posts.
“Trouble!” Thatchet shouted. “One of the ships is unloading troops to fight back!”
Reggie didn’t see anything pop up. There were no juggernauts to be seen on board Turrim Auream. “I’m not seeing any.”
“Foot soldiers,” Thatchet clarified.
“Burn ‘em,” Chase cut in. “You’ve got a Flame Jet on that Imp. Use it!”
“But…”
Reggie snarled. This was no time for squeamishness over NPCs. The struggle was easier to distance himself from when they weren’t there in front of him. “Confirmed. Open fire with fire.”
On the division display, Thatchet’s Imp, Yoink, took torso damage and a few chips out of its head armor but nothing that even left the green range. Paying attention to Thatchet’s heat indicator, he saw the gauges rise.
There was no time to monitor the side battles in detail. Reggie had arrived at the station core. There was no more room for a juggernaut to maneuver.
Opening the front of Vortex like a clamshell, Reggie climbed out and down the leg. Once he reached ground level, there was an automated double-door of polished steel barring his way onto the elevator. A touchscreen control console blinked a silent, foreboding red.
SECURITY LOCKDOWN
SECURITY LOCKDOWN
SECURITY LOCKDOWN
Reggie took off a glove and pressed his hand to the panel.
SECURITY LOCKDOWN
He hadn’t expected much different. Switching radio frequencies to the temporary channel Strike Team 1, he called over to Ellie and June. “Status on the security hub? I’m here at the elevator. Can’t go up with this lockdown active.”
There was silence.
“Ellie? June? Report,” Reggie ordered.
He was growing antsy. All his detailed tactical displays, even up in Vortex, were useless. Drawing the new Zeephus L-220 blaster pistol he’d picked up for this mission, Reggie put his back to the wall beside the elevator and watched for trouble.
A gaggle of station personnel darted out of a side passage. They didn’t look like anyone who wanted to get in Reggie’s way, but he fired a few shots over their heads to chase them back into cover.
“June!” Reggie snapped. “Report in!”
“Sorry,” June came back over the radio a few seconds later, short of breath. “More resistance than we anticipated. All clear now. Ellie and I are working on—” there was the sound of blaster fire and a shower of spark, “disabling the security lockout.”
Reggie kept watch on the red, blinking panel.
SECURITY LOCKDOWN
SECURITY LOCKDOWN
With June’s mic open, he could make out the distinct sounds of two different weapons carving up the security hub.
SECURITY LOCKDOWN
The panel stopped blinking. An up and down arrow bracketed the number 4.
&
nbsp; Reggie tapped the up arrow, and the number counted down, accompanied by a whirring from the elevator shaft.
3
2
1
The doors opened. Reggie kept clear, Zeephus L-220 at the ready. When he glanced into the elevator car, blaster leveled, he confirmed it was empty.
“I’m in,” he reported to Strike Team 1. There was a similar panel on the inside, except with a larger selection of numbers to choose from. The highest number was 15. Reggie tapped it, and the elevator doors slid shut.
He switched to the division-wide frequency. “All pilots, report in.”
Lin was the first to respond. “Dock 11 tried to fight back. All clear now.”
ZRod’s report was similar. “Had some hung-ho fuckers at Dock 3 climb onto my jug and try to cut in with hand tools. Vented the docking arm to vacuum and they ran off.”
The rest of the division gave the all-clear.
Reggie’s elevator arrived at floor 15. He took cover out of sight of the room beyond when the doors opened. Blaster fire scorched the back of the elevator car instantly.
“Give it up,” Reggie called out. “The station is under Wounded Legion control. Your security forces are out of the picture. Automated systems are offline. All docking arms are secured.”
“I won’t go down without a fight,” a gruff female voice called out defiantly.
“You don’t have to go down at all,” Reggie shouted back. Luckily for him, the AI was that dense, because that came out sounding awful. “I still need an administrator for this station. You’ve got experience.”
“I won’t go down without a fight,” the station manager reiterated.
Reggie rolled his eyes. Sometimes the stubbornness built into certain NPCs strained belief. A live commander might have tried to lure him out with a false surrender, bargained for the safety of her staff, maybe even just surrendered without further fuss. But the idea that a corporate middle-woman would be so loyal to her employer as to give her life to hold onto the station another minute or two was baffling.
“Fine,” Reggie muttered beneath his breath. “Be that way.”
Reaching to his belt, Reggie unclipped a flash-bang grenade Ellie had recommended. It produced a 10-second stun effect that reduced mobility to 25 percent and induced blindness. He clicked the trigger button and lobbed it into the manager’s office.
The concussion shook the elevator.
Reggie rushed into the cloud of smoke the grenade had left in its aftermath, searching out the manager by the sound of her coughing. As soon as he made out her outline in the haze, the practical side of Reggie told him to fire. Managers were interchangeable, especially NPC managers.
Without time to think things through, Reggie reacted on instinct. Just navigating the room had eaten up half of his 10-second window of advantage. Before the grenade’s effect wore off, he dove and tackled the stumbling manager to the floor. With his superior weight, he pinned her down while he wrested the blaster from her grasp.
Still coughing, the manager struggled feebly as Reggie rolled her onto her stomach, twisted an arm behind her, and knelt on her lower back.
Then the smoke cleared, and the grenade’s effect dissipated as if by magic.
“Surrender,” Reggie ordered, reaching over and retrieving the woman’s blaster, pointing the weapon at her head. At this range, he could make out the details. She wasn’t quite middle-aged, with smooth skin and hair pulled back in a severe-looking bun. She wore a pair of computerized glasses and a figure-hugging business suit. There was nothing intimidating about her in this position. She looked scared.
Reggie knew that if she refused, he probably couldn’t squeeze the trigger.
“Surrender,” he bellowed, praying the AI wasn’t going all Bushido on him. How much loyalty could a corporate suit possibly have for a paycheck?
“Computer,” the manager said. “Relinquish command, authorization Kara Evers, Code Alpha One Sierra.”
Electronic chimes and computerized gurgles gave the impression that a whole lot of calculations were going on in the background of the machine’s core. Reggie worried that her order was some sort of concealed doomsday command like a self-destruct or venting the station’s atmosphere.
But after a moment’s processing, the computer prompted him. “Identify new commander.”
“King,” Reggie said. “Wounded Legion.”
[Primary Objective Complete: Force the Surrender of Turrim Auream Starport to Wounded Legion]
[Mission Successful - 10,100 XP - 12,500Cr]
Reggie let go of Kara Evers’s arm and took his knee off her back. She allowed him to help her to her feet, and once they were both standing, she regarded him impassively. “What would you like me to do?” she asked.
Blood rushed to Reggie’s ears at the innuendos the game kept dangling in front of him. Wasn’t it enough that he’d secured a solid income stream for his faction? Did the deposed manager have to hint that there were more rewards than credits and experience for keeping her alive?
“Get back to work,” he ordered. “Get this place cleaned up. Hire new security. Broadcast a general all-clear to the station visitors and personnel. And make a full report four times a day that integrates with the Wounded Legion faction base.”
“Yes, Mr. King,” Kara Evers replied.
Chapter Sixteen
Reggie performed a few warm-up exercises in his Seattle Lite apartment. Toe touches, side stretches, a brief stint of running in place. None of it did much for his digitized muscles, but it put him in the right frame of mind before accepting Chase’s request to meet him in Silent Shuriken.
Chase hadn’t bugged him about the game in weeks, but this time he promised that there were new features Reggie just had to see.
In the history of spy movies, there was a category for guys like Chase: non-spies. If there had been a clearer way to tell Reggie that he wanted to talk to him alone, in an environment Chase could control, Reggie couldn’t think what it might be. Even blurting out, “Hey, Reggie, I need to talk to you where all these new guys can’t hear us” might have at least been passed off as a joke.
With a sigh, Reggie called up a game menu.
[Apartment > Logout]
Reggie tapped the word.
[Really Logout? Y/N]
UNABLE TO LOG OUT; USER BODY NOT AVAILABLE
Disturbing as that message ought to have been, Reggie was getting used to it. Another menu popped up behind it.
[Relog options: Apartment - Armored Souls - Silent Shuriken - More Options]
One of these days, Reggie ought to create accounts in all the other games. If nothing else, seeing this screen wouldn’t make his life look so small and insignificant. At best, it might remind him to take a vacation now and then.
Reggie tapped Silent Shuriken and closed his eyes for the disorienting trip between game universes.
When he opened his eyes, Reggie’s clothes had altered. He was dressed in the all-purpose ninja jumpsuit his avatar had worn upon logging out. A courtyard surrounded him, serene and peaceful with a trickle of water from an unseen fountain gurgling nearby.
“Hey, Reg,” Chase said.
Reggie whirled at the voice just inches behind him. Chase was there in his costume regalia, looking more like a fighting game champion than a stealthy assassin. He let out the quick breath he’d sucked in.
“Don’t sneak up on me like that,” Reggie scolded.
Even with the lower half of his face hidden by a mask, Reggie could see the grin in Chase’s eyes. “Hey, with a Perception rating like yours, I’d have to play the tuba the whole way here for you to spot me. I have Passive Invisibility, Shadow Form, and Dance of Feathers.”
Reggie craned his head away. “Dance of Feathers? That some sort of strip club act?”
Chase chortled. “No. It’s silent running.” To demonstrate, Chase ran toward a nearby stonewall, continued up for three full running steps, and backflipped to land where he’d started. All without a whisper.
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“Cool,” Reggie said. “But I don’t think that’s why you wanted to see me here.”
“It wasn’t, but I did want to show off a little,” Chase said. He looked over both shoulders as if he wasn’t an admin on this alpha server. “I’m worried that we might have a mole.”
Reggie crossed his arms and cocked an eyebrow. “A mole.”
“Don’t gimme that look,” Chase snapped. “I’m serious. This game trains you to look for stuff that’s based on real human psychology, and I’m getting pretty good at it. It’s one of the skills that’s not reflected in stats, so I have to actually work at it. And I have.”
Reggie took a long breath and started walking toward the noble house that he knew was adjacent to this garden. “So, lemme get this sorted out here. You’re learning ninja mind-reading tricks here and applying them to real live people in Armored Souls. Based on your Zen observations, you think we’ve recruited traitors. That about cover it?”
“I’ve been practicing while awake too,” Chase added. “I could tell when my supervisor was bullshitting about it being my turn on the rotation to debug outsourced code.”
“You sure it’s not just wishful thinking?”
Reggie felt a cool wind that cut through the thin fabric of his uniform. He shivered. There was an atmosphere of loneliness and paranoia that pervaded Silent Shuriken. Sure, it was probably great for the ambiance players these games looked for, but it wasn’t promising as far as objectively assessing motives in a more neutral world.
“Why would I wish for traitors?” Chase asked with a scowl. “I want Wounded Legion to kick ass. Infighting—especially without grounds—will only weaken us.”
“I was talking about your day job, but I guess the observation is valid. If you catch a mole, it looks good for you. You become more valuable. Maybe people come to you for advice instead of me or June.”
Chase shrugged. “I don’t care about that shit. I’m already your right-hand man, and we both know it. June’s a soldier by trade, I guess, so you two relate, plus the two of you can plug uglies when you get the itch. But I’m the one who knows the game mechanics best. Company rules prevent Valhalla West factions among employees, but I still bounce stuff around with other players at lunch and shit. I may not have access to the code for Plasma Launcher targeting degradation over various ranges, but I play foosball with the guy who does.”
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