Reggie stared at the holographic map, eyes fixed on the tiny blob of Wounded Legion space. He wished he had a good, truthful answer he felt free to share. But letting the cat out of the bag on the mole idea would only lead to distrust in the ranks. Reggie was their leader. It was his burden to bear the weight of those suspicions and not cast aspersions on anyone until he had evidence to back up his claims.
Instead, he went for platitudes.
“Wars are messy,” Reggie told her. “You can’t defend every hill and beach. Sometimes you’ve got to take a kick in the teeth before you can find the best way to fight back. But I can promise you this: none of us are trained to give up.”
Chapter Twenty
There was no mission that day. Reggie could have taken the legion for a little joyride, just some easy XP and credits, but opted to free his troops for personal missions. A few took him up on the offer. ZRod and Reese ran a merc job; Harper, Hime, and Ellie took a Star League bounty on a smuggler base. The rest logged out for a breather from Armored Souls.
Frank and Reggie were the last two in the Green Zone, shooting pool over beers.
Simulated balls cracked with Reggie’s break. When none went in, Frank circled the table like a predator, sizing up his options.
“I’m just wondering whether we retrench,” Reggie said, holding a half-full pint glass. “Maybe we expanded too quickly. I trust you guys. Alpha Platoon is clean, or I’d eat my dog tags.”
“Maybe the pajama cowboy developed a taste for skulduggery,” Frank suggested, leaning over and taking aim at the one-ball. He snapped a shot, and the yellow ball slammed down into a corner pocket, cue ball drifting to a halt in line to make an easy shot on the 2. “Might want to see about some mustard and relish for those dog tags.”
Reggie shook his head as Frank angled the two-ball gently into a side pocket and rolled the cue ball to the far side of the table near the three. “Don’t believe it. I’d sooner believe the timing of that attack was luck than Chase betraying us. It’s got to be someone from Bravo or Charlie Platoon.”
Frank held out his cue, swinging the tip in tight circles. “Something, something, baby and bathwater,” he grumbled. “Think you’re overreacting here.”
“One of my own guys is feeding us piecemeal to the sharks, and you don’t think it’s serious?” Reggie scoffed.
Frank was a listener. He’d hang around talking about nearly anything, but his judgment wasn’t the reason Reggie was commiserating. The crusty old soldier was just the only one around all the time.
“Never said it wasn’t serious. This business is serious as trench foot,” Frank said. “No. I’m just saying that maybe chucking the engine out of this bus isn’t the way to fix it.”
“They’re not the engine,” Reggie countered. “That’s Alpha Platoon. We can fight fine without them.”
“Bigger bus. Shifting gears. Sure, there’s a bit of grinding, but you can’t move the bus without the newer, bigger engine you just put in. Besides, kick out all of them pups and you’re out one spy and nine new enemies.”
Reggie scowled and surveyed the table. Frank had finally missed a shot, leaving him with an awkward angle to sink the 4. Watching to see if Frank was paying attention, Reggie blinked, calling up a tactical display.
[4-Ball - 13% To Hit]
He angled his cue stick ever so slightly.
[4-Ball - 18% To Hit]
[4-Ball - 35% To Hit]
It wasn’t getting any better than that no matter how much he steadied his hand or shifted his aim. Reggie tried to keep a steady bead as he drew back.
Frank’s cue slammed down onto Reggie’s. “How about you shut that darned thing off and play square?”
Reggie didn’t bother denying the charge. He blinked away the aiming assist, took the shot, and missed, clipping the six-ball.
“So what do I do?” Reggie asked. “I can’t run missions without looking over my shoulder, expecting someone to be feeding my planets to a bigger faction.”
Frank took his shot, neatly parking the four-ball in a corner pocket and careening the cue ball into a knot of congested balls at the center of the table. “Look. I’m a lifelong grunt. I never made the switch to Army Intelligence or whatever they called it after the big war. I didn’t play James Bond as a kid because there wasn’t any such thing yet. You want my advice? If you trust the kid, go talk to Chase. He loves this shit.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Reggie took Frank’s advice and relogged into Silent Shuriken in search of Chase.
When the disorientation of switching universes passed, Reggie was in the starting zone by himself. It occurred to him that he was looking for a high-level ninja who didn’t know Reggie was coming.
Drawing his blade, Reggie sighed through his cloth mask and set off in the hopes of discovering some evidence of where Chase might have gone. The possibilities were nigh endless. As a junior developer, he knew the whole game, even the parts that hadn’t been released yet. For all Reggie knew, Chase was making use of privileged access to test unreleased content.
He popped open his friends list.
[Chase - Shadowmaster L20 - Ghost Forest]
Well, that narrowed things down, at least. Reggie followed crossroads signs and made his way for the Ghost Forest. Since he was only level 4, and the Ghost Forest was recommended for levels 8+, this was certainly going to be a lively search.
The gates to the Ghost Forest looked like one of the Shinto temples Reggie had seen in anime. Two pillars supported a beam with a slight arch, giving the impression of horns. Even by the moonlight, Reggie could make out that the whole gate was painted red.
Taking a breath to steel himself, Reggie entered a crouch and bolted through into the Ghost Forest. As he plunged into darkness, Reggie crossed his hands in front of him, fingers interlaced.
[Bat Sight]
The darkness took on shape. Reggie made out his surroundings as a series of three-dimensional silhouettes, shrouded in halos of silver. Towering trees loomed on all sides. His path curved a winding route before branching several times, ensuring that an unwary traveler would be lost.
Reggie froze. A beast snarled. Then another joined in. Then a whole pack.
Wolves.
Spotting the first of them, Reggie squinted.
[Kurookami - L9 - Severe Risk]
Well, wasn’t Appraise a fun skill in a high-level zone? Quickly scanning the trees above, Reggie pressed his palms together, squatted low, and leaped.
When he landed, Reggie was on a branch fifty feet aboveground, watching in the monochrome gloom as a pack of wolf creatures gathered below him. Perhaps thirty feet away, there was another branch on the next tree large enough to support him. He didn’t have the Feather Dance skill to walk on mere twigs.
As Reggie pondered the odds of making that leap, he heard the yelp from below. One of the wolves flew sideways, spraying a gout of blood that shone crimson even in the shadowy night-vision.
He could appreciate the aesthetic efforts that went into Silent Shuriken, but he was more curious what had just murdered a level 9 monster below him and what its plans for Reggie might be when it was done. He clutched the trunk of his tree perch and worked his way to the far side to watch from better cover.
Wolf after wolf died. Whatever these kurookami were, they were no match for the whirlwind of invisible death that had come for them. When the last of them lay still, the only sound remaining was Reggie’s quickened breath.
“You should be more careful,” Chase said casually from right behind Reggie.
Startled, he whirled and drew his blade, but Chase merely laughed.
“Cool it, tank-boy,” Chase advised. “You came here looking for me. You sorta found me. What’s up?”
Leaning back against the tree trunk, Reggie pulled down his mask. “Thanks for the save. But it’s Armored Souls that has me worried.”
“You don’t say,” Chase said dryly. “I got that impression when you shit yourself and sat around smelling it
instead of picking a new mission.”
“You were right about the mole.”
“Yeah. Someone pantsed us good on Cagamere,” Chase agreed. “If they’d gotten there before the buildings finished, you’d have gotten a partial refund.”
“I need to figure out who it was,” Reggie said. “You’ve got admin friends. Any way you can finagle a look at message logs? All I’d need would be to figure out—”
“Whoa,” Chase said with upheld hands. “Stop right there. Big old no-no. Terms of Service. Privacy Policy. All that shit you click mindlessly when you sign up that won’t hold up in court? That’s my day job. I’d get fired, blackballed, and if I’m lucky, maybe not sued.”
“I never saw any of that,” Reggie said. “I got dumped into Armored Souls by my shrink, remember?”
“They didn’t have you sign up?”
Reggie shook his head. “Medical proxy. I didn’t even get control of my account until after the Mechromancer incident.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Chase said. “Still applies to me. You wanna do an end run around the rules, talk to Ken Bradley. See how much his golden boy you really are.”
“You think?” Reggie asked cautiously.
Chase put his hands on Reggie’s shoulders. “Look, man. I’ll help you set traps and run decoy missions. I’ll play the discontented underling begging to be turned into a double-agent. But I can’t dig into server-side crap for you. You come up with an in-game plan, I’m all ears. If you want the keys to the vault, hit up your buddy Ken.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Reggie paced his apartment. The personal message had only gone out five minutes ago. Ken Bradley was a busy guy. He couldn’t possibly be sitting around waiting for comatose players to come begging for favors.
The television was silent. Outside the windows, the midday sun glinted off shining skyscrapers as white-capped mountains rose in the distance. None of it was real, but it was Reggie’s reality. He was as illusory as the cityscape. He was digitally rendered, just like the sunlight.
What difference should it make to Ken Bradley if Reggie got a bit of a helping hand in the game he called home?
Nodding to himself, Reggie knew that was the line of logic he wanted to pursue. Call Ken out on having relegated to this existence. Make him feel guilty for stranding Reggie in a universe where not only was he a small fish in a big pond—which was fair—he had to deal with cheating, conniving, backstabbing troops selling him out to the highest bidder.
If one of those new recruits logged in with an Elephant in their hangar, he’d know who’d been bought.
If only it had been that simple.
The doorbell rang.
Reggie practically sprinted across the living room to answer it.
Ken Bradley stepped inside the instant the door opened, taking Reggie’s hand and shaking it. “Gotta say. Love what you’ve done with the place. How’s it going, Reg? Can I call you Reg?”
“Uh, sure. Listen, thanks for coming by. I had something I wanted to talk to you about, Mr. Bradley.”
“Ken,” he replied, striding across the apartment like he owned the place and heading directly for the fridge. He helped himself to a beer, grabbing the cap and using the hem of his Valhalla West polo shirt to twist it loose. “So what’s on your mind, Reg? Got some feedback from a shut-in’s perspective? Bug pop up somewhere and the Q/A team giving you the runaround? What’s up?”
“Armored Souls needs a loyalty system,” Reggie said, trying to play into the issues Ken Bradley seemed to be expecting from him. “I’ve got a sell-out in my new faction, and—”
“Hell of a thing, huh?” Ken replied. “Love the faction system. Intrigue, plotting, all kinds of emergent game-play that we don’t even have to program.”
“Well, there’s an exploit being used to feed sensitive data to the enemy,” Reggie said.
“Exploit?”
“Yeah. Anyone in the faction can report intel to the enemy without the faction leader knowing.”
“Dude. That’s warfare. Shit’s been going that way since Sun Tzu and probably even guys before all that got written down,” Ken said, shaking his head and tilting back one of Reggie’s beers. “Ahh, even better than the real stuff.”
To his taste buds, maybe. Not to Reggie’s. Whether it was his imagination or not, he felt like he could taste the ones and zeroes in the brew.
“Yeah, but it ruins the faction experience.”
“Does it?”
“Doesn’t it?” Reggie echoed back. “I’ve got fifteen people, and no clue who’s stabbing me in the back. I lost a new forward base just minutes after I put up new defensive structures on it.”
Ken scratched the back of his head. “Bummer.”
“There’s no way they could have timed it that precisely without help from an inside man.”
“I wouldn’t say no way,” Ken argued. “Even luck could have accounted for it. But you’re probably right that someone’s playing both sides here. But that’s working as intended. I can’t force players to be loyal to their faction. Hell, nothing’s stopping players from making out-of-game arrangements on third-party sites. Besides, it makes the game more realistic. If you’re having trouble with spies and turncoats, come up with countermeasures.”
Ken raised his beer in a toast as he headed for the door. “Best of luck. I may poke in once in a while to see how things are going. But you can be sure I’ll be watching with rapt interest from afar—emphasis on the afar part—to see how this all plays out. Ciao.”
The door closed behind him, and Reggie was no better off than when Ken Bradley had arrived. It hadn’t even been worth the price of the beer Ken had taken, and Reggie didn’t pay for the beer.
Chapter Twenty-Three
It was days later when Reggie finally brought his platoons out for a conquest. The dolomite mines of Nephtali would be a healthy addition to the coffers of Wounded Legion. Baking under the twin suns’ radiation, the planet was devoid of life but not of defenses. They’d weathered withering weapons fire from dug-in defenders beneath bulwarks buried in the remote regions surrounding the mines. It had been one of the longest missions Reggie had undertaken, cleansing half a dozen scattered outposts that all had to be neutralized before the planet would surrender.
“Think this is the last of them,” June radioed.
TARGET DATA RECEIVED
A pair of Jackals appeared on the mini-map at AA-107 and AA-108, emerging from behind an outcropping of rock some 1,500m distant.
“Thatchet, ZRod, fall back,” Reggie ordered. “You two’ve taken enough punishment. We’re all going home in one piece tonight.”
“Except for Hime,” Chase reminded him. She’d stumbled into an ambush as she wandered wide of the division, taking shots from multiple sides. Her juggernaut, an Osprey named WindDancer, hadn’t survived the time it took everyone else to reach her with fire support.
“Except Hime,” Reggie amended. “But the rest of you are coming through this. This’ll be a good win. A little out of our neighborhood but worth the extra transit time.”
“Says the guy who doesn’t have work in the morning,” ZRod said. “I’m willing to risk it to speed this show up.”
Insubordination. Was it a plot to undermine Reggie, or just a guy on the clock to wake up for a job detailing sedans and minivans?
“It’s your insurance and XP on the line. You willing to risk it? Level 12 wants to know,” Reggie said. “If you want to speed things up, head back for the drop ship with some salvage.”
“Fine,” ZRod replied. “I’ll haul scrap. Just step on it. I’ve gotta be up in… thirty-five minutes.”
While the argument dwindled to a sullen submission, the rest of the division was closing in and launching long-range attacks.
One of the two Jackals exploded in a rock concert of crisscrossed lasers.
[Secondary Objective: Destroy Enemy Juggernauts 127/128]
“Can I get a woot woot?” Chase shouted, taking credit for the kill am
id the flurry.
[Secondary Objective Complete: Destroy Enemy Juggernauts 128/128]
Reggie let out a breath that deflated him like a pool float. He slumped in the pilot’s seat of Vortex. “Good job, everyone. Clean up. Take high-value scrap; we don’t have room for a quarter of this wreckage. I’ve gotta make a call.”
Switching frequencies, Reggie contacted the mining base camp. “This is King, head of Wounded Legion. I expect your unconditional surrender, or we will be forced to destroy you.”
There was a protocol. AI commanders were programmed to listen for keywords. Reggie had just ticked off all the boxes on that checklist.
[Primary Objective Complete: Force the Surrender of Nephtali to Wounded Legion]
Wearily, Reggie trudged back to the drop ship along with the rest of Wounded Legion. A smile crept onto his face as he realized his name badge had changed. There was a little plus sign after “King, Commander 15.” He had leveled up. Finally, he’d be able to take Command Radius 5 and boost the entire faction’s combat effectiveness.
He spent the trip back to the Green Zone planning out his skill points. By the time they arrived, he was officially Commander L16.
[PER: 7]
[GUN: 12]
[SHO: 2]
[AGI: 2]
[PIL: 9]
[TGH: 8]
[CMD: 25]
[Command Radius 5]
[Heat Management 2]
[Hardened Systems]
There was nothing spectacular about it. He hadn’t taken any active perks like Rage Mode or Called Shot. The Command Radius took 5 perk slots all by itself and did nothing for Vortex’s battlefield performance. Heat Management was just to let him be a little lax about holding his fire on the Plasma Launchers. Hardened Systems just reduced the chance of critical damage to Vortex’s internal workings.
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