by Arthur Stone
He had enough.
Even just one pearl was a solid find, and a red pearl was twice as effective as a black one. As a result, it went for much more than twice the price.
Time to see if this pearl’s any good.
And time to gather more information on whether his absurd Luck was any help.
Now, just one thing remained: selecting an ability from the list the System had offered him. He had not done that yet.
First, he should talk to March. And perhaps with others, as well. After his reading trips, Cheater had remained unconvinced of what he should choose. Some options were useless, but there were several ones that were clearly useful.
He could only choose one.
Perhaps he should have asked March before, since they were unlikely to have a chance to talk face to face on an extreme crossing attempt.
He would wait.
Chapter 12
Life Nine. Breaking Brakes
Experienced sailors have a proverb: “As you name the boat, so shall it float.”
Or at least Cheater thought he remembered that. The System’s memory blocks were so strange. A player could fail to remember a single episode from his life before and yet quote verbatim the lines of an obscure film he had once watched. Ask him when and where he saw the film, though, and he would draw a blank.
The leading vehicle in their convoy—the one with the antiaircraft gun—had most of the detailing from its previous owners intact, including the digital-camo paint job and the inscription on its armored bumper: Calamity. Cheater’s subconscious and common sense joined forces to shout in unison that this was not a very good name for the most important piece of the convoy. The degree of superstition among players was legendary, and Cheater had trouble imagining a man or woman who would inscribe such a name on their bumper.
Cheater was not superstitious, though. It was not the name which bothered him as much as the composition of their team. Their leader, as was his habit, refused to answer even a question as simple as “what time is it?” without first making several attempts to remain silent or divert the questioner. Cheater’s history with him, their victory over the Unnamed One, had failed to open him up.
As with the first crossing, Cheater had no idea exactly where they were going to cross the border, nor how. The only thing he knew for sure was that it would not be easy. Far north lay the most used trail across for trade caravans. There was also a closer option that might work without too much difficulty, but that only opened up a few days each month, if that. The party, if they traveled the distance, would not hit the next window. They’d need to wait a few weeks. Hanging around in this region, which was politically boiling over, was a dubious suggestion.
Cheater had plenty of serious enemies here by now, too.
Even without the difficulties of the way itself, he could never afford to be careless. March seemed, of course, diametrically opposed to the idea of making anything easier. He aimed to squeeze the maximum bonus out of each subsequent border crossing. It was a promising tactic for a high-level player, but overly dangerous and even unnerving for someone just looking to get to the other side, without demanding any superfluous bonuses or loot along the way.
There was no changing March, though.
The others?
Cheater only had faith in two of them: Clown and Fatso. And, partly, in Janitor. The quasi had the same opaque character as March. While the latter had become much more open recently, the former remained a closed fortress.
Something was wrong with him. He was a wonderful fighter—everyone had to admit that. Few people could go up against a pair of staffed and armored personnel carriers and deal with them both with their bare hands. In every situation, he had performed beautifully.
But no mere thug was worth a white pearl. A golden pearl would be more practical, and it was still an exceptional enough trophy to be extremely difficult to get, even if one had serious money.
Yet March had easily found a white pearl and executed a deal.
And then passed the pearl on to the quasi just as easily.
That aspect of their relationship bothered Cheater. He smelled something fishy.
And no one likes the smell of fish.
All of the other members of their team were many times more distressing. Some, orders of magnitude more. Even Button, who had helped Cheater survive the first crossing by reviving him twice, did not seem as active or useful now as before.
Fatso had brought her along as he might bring a backpack. The quiet girl had really had a nervous breakdown. A dangerously prolonged breakdown. She had used dubious methods to fight it. First, she settled into some hole, then she got stone trunk, then cut her veins and nearly died, then downed some powerful antidepressants, the kind where one pill could turn a horse into a vegetable.
More powerful substances followed, sometimes.
Fatso had spent his recent life trying to return Button to a normal lifestyle. He had even found a professional psychologist for her, and they had completed a couple of sessions. The shrink had charged a small fortune and confidently announced that a month or two of therapy would have her cured.
Fatso did not have a month or two. So, he provoked Button to join him on a drinking binge. He had barely managed to drag her to the truck, tossing her in like a sack of potatoes.
Then, he had collapsed next to his party, with a smile on his face as though after a job well done.
No matter what problems Button was having, though, she was still a partymate, and that came with a level of trust.
Nut, Goblin, Nipple, and Gangrene were utterly new. They nearly doubled the size of the party, of course. It did seem too much to have six people driving in three vehicles. They had even tossed around questions about how they would even manage to control so many vehicles. There weren’t enough hands for all the jobs required. He might have thought that he would rejoice at anyone joining the party at that point. But he had so many questions about the quality of these new members.
Nut was a sapper. It was in this capacity that he had been hired. There were questions as to his core aptitude—he did not seem to be a genius with explosives, but he definitely seemed like an empty talker who barely knew how to use a hand grenade.
But setting that aside, why did they need a sapper for this crossing? They hadn’t needed one for the last.
March had some cunning plan—or not so cunning—and he was not being forthcoming with the details.
As for Goblin, Nipple, and Gangrene, they were members of the lowest social class on the Continent. The dregs of society. The world was full of such people, unable or unwilling to recover from the initial System debuff to their mind. They were content with eking out their existence. Why bother with anything that wasn’t strictly necessary for survival? Food and drink were easy to get, if you stayed in the right places. Sex was easy, too. Even spores weren’t too hard to acquire. You didn’t even have to venture out of your favorite stable. There were beggars, unskilled laborers, burglars, prostitutes, petty thieves, and conmen in every region. Professions where you were less likely to die than hunters or adventure seekers.
These people had as much ambition towards personal growth as a cow on its way to the slaughterhouse. Resets pumped food and quality booze into the world, and as long as you had arms, you could get enough spores to survive. Perhaps even with no arms. So they lived with their cheap pleasures, being sure not to do anything too difficult.
Such circles, of course, had strong inclinations towards criminal activity. Even those who were usually law abiding could be turned to crime by a growing need for spec or some other drug. The waste dumps attracted these types. Some stables would not let you in if you looked suspicious, unless you could show them a high-quality weapon and fifty spores.
The most disturbing part of all was Nipple’s role as healer. Healers were so valuable that most of the faults a healer might have were readily forgiven, as long as they did their job well. But she was filthy, unkempt, and smelled of cheap alcohol and
vomit, and she was accompanied by uncouth junkies.
Sure, Cheater was not opposed to dragging her into the truck, as they had with Button. But what about Goblin and Gangrene? They were just looking not to be disturbed, to scrape along in obscurity. Not for a perilous border crossing. The System offered many rewards for a border crossing, but none of them could get you high. So what did they care?
They were clearly not doing this for the rewards; they needed to escape the region, and fast. Trade caravans wouldn’t take them across, unless it was for a hefty price, and Cheater knew they didn’t have money. So they jumped at the opportunity to join the crossing party.
What were they fleeing? Debts? It was hard to believe that these lowlifes could owe a lot of money to someone dangerous. No serious person would lend serious money to them.
What were they afraid of?
Cheater didn’t know, but he didn’t like it.
How did he even get involved in this mess? Why did everything always have to be so sketchy? Couldn’t he just have paid the merchants, and crossed the border in comfort? The excuse March had made about no one venturing over during the political turmoil didn’t matter. There were always people willing to take risks for the sake of business, no matter what.
But March always did this.
Then there was that first bad omen that struck from the get go.
Barely five miles from Rainbow, their caravan of three vehicles stopped.
* * *
Cheater found March behind the second truck. He was gripping the side of the vehicle with one hand, his usual beverage in the other, as he peered into the depths of the cargo area.
“Admiring our alcoholics and addicts?” Cheater asked.
“Yes, indeed. Stallions, all of them,” March answered.
“Clown wants you.”
“Can’t he just find a wrench without my help for once?”
“I don’t think it’s reparable.”
Their primary truck was out of commission. It had driven straight off the road rather than follow a turn, crashed through the bushes, and stopped after hitting its third and largest ash tree. The armor prevented its bumper from taking too much damage, but Cheater didn’t know about the rest.
Thankfully, they had Clown: their chief mechanic, and a part-time driver, too. He had been operating their “self-propelled artillery” at the time of the crash. If he couldn’t explain what happened, no one could.
The accident had come out of the blue.
Clown was on the ground right under the front axle. As he lay there, he did nothing but look thoughtfully up at the vehicle’s undercarriage.
“Well?” March sat down next to the driver-side wheel.
“Well what?”
“You’re the one who called me over here. But I was curious: how is it that you managed to drive right off a perfectly good road? A three-year-old could do a better job taking a turn. Even if she was born blind.”
“Look, this happened because I’m smart. I hate it when shit happens unexpectedly, so I test everything. Repeatedly. I’m paranoid like that.”
“So what were you testing this time? The truck’s performance against trees?”
“No, I was testing the brakes. Under load. Back in town, I gave it the old acceleration and braking test while I was looking at our options. Everything seemed fine. I’ve been testing them along the way, too. Also fine. Until this turn. That wasn’t really a test—we had to brake for the turn. So I hit it at speed, still testing the truck, but this time, I had no brakes. Something is very wrong. They shouldn’t have just evaporated like that.”
March popped open another can. “Look, I’m no mechanic. Not at all. Just a rider. So tell me what’s wrong, and keep it simple. Simple enough for even Cheater here to understand.”
“It’s not a breakdown. It’s sabotage. But I don’t know how they did it. Look for yourself: the brake lines have just crumbled to dust. That doesn’t happen. They were strong brake lines, too. Reinforced. Sure, things can rupture, things can corrode, that happens. But I’ve seen burst brake lines before. They don’t look anything like this when they do. Nothing like this happens on its own—someone very intentionally made them go to shit. In a very specific way, too, so that the lines would disintegrate not at any old time, but only during a power brake while turning. Even with my mechanical skill, I can’t figure out how they managed it. Whoever did this was no mechanic. More like some kind of magician.”
“So you’re thinking someone sacrificed a couple of virgins and mumbled some magic words, and then our brakes blew out,” March frowned.
“Yeah. Look, joking aside, it’s doable. Difficult, but doable. It could have been remotely triggered, of course, by someone watching us. But I checked everything back there, especially the brakes. I didn’t find anything malicious or out of place on them, just ordinary brake parts. But let’s assume something did escape my notice. Well, in that case, I still have my powers of observation now, and I know where to look. There’s nothing there. There should be some trace, some hint of what went wrong. Why isn’t it there? I’m telling you, this is some deep shit. We got hit by an ability of some kind for sure. Something that works like a mine. Set to activate only when a certain condition is fulfilled: in this case, braking and taking a corner. Perhaps only with a right turn, not a left.”
“That sounds too complicated,” March wondered, “and abilities don’t work in Rainbow. It would have needed to be activated after we had left, and we haven’t made any stops. You think they used it on us while we were moving? How? Something as difficult as you describe could not be executed on a passing vehicle. They might as well just cut the brake lines rather than try to work miracles.”
Clown shook his head. “As I said, I have no idea how they did it. Nothing has puzzled me like this since Cheater summoned all those—you know. Not for a long time. This unknowable something only turned our brakes to shit while I was braking around a corner. A sharp corner. Maybe it’s some kind of link between the steering column and the brake lines, who knows. That’s how it is. Someone, somehow, has sabotaged us. Do you remember how we slowed down at that fork just over the border? We let some trader vehicles pass us? That might have been it. They were hired to hit us. That was outside of Rainbow, after all, so the abilities would be working again. It’s possible.”
“I get it,” March said. “But I’m still wondering why they would choose something so complicated.”
Nut came up from behind. “Guys, there’s a ghoul coming. Remember the one Clown knocked down before we came into this turn? Well he woke up, and now he’s chasing us. Limping along on a broken leg. There was this one time the guys and I were smoking, and we saw...”
Clown poked his head out from under the truck and pitched a question to interrupt yet another one of the sapper’s idiotic stories. “Hey, Nut, you’ve been in these parts for a while. Do you know what the road is like up ahead?”
“Nothing special. Just a road. There’s a stable an hour down. Pretty boring place. Tiny. It did used to have this one dude, though, who would sell us some interesting spec if we had the money, but then he...”
“No, not the stable,” Clown interrupted. “The road itself.”
“What about it? It’s just a normal road.”
“Do you remember any steep drops, maybe, where the road turns to avoid them? Not far from here? A road winding down a cliff or something. It might be a turn to the right.”
“There are lots of steep downgrades further down, yes.”
“And does the road turn right in front of them? You know, sharp turns. Where if you didn’t make the turn, you’d go over the cliff,” Clown tried to explain.
Nut blinked a few times, then his eyes lit up. “Yeah, I remember a place like that. Close by. The road turns right to avoid the drop. Who the hell cares? There’s nothing there, just a steep slide down to the river. Well, the dry river. No water left now. Sometimes it floods in, but it doesn’t stick around for long. So the road continues along the
edge until you reach the bridge, which usually runs over a bunch of mud and dead fish.”
“Is all of this in open ground?”
“Open?”
“You know,” Clown said patiently, “a big open area, but maybe with something like a wall of trees, or some village buildings, or a corn field nearby. Somewhere nearby to hide. Somewhere with a good view of the road.”
“Hmm, well, it’s a pasture area, all the way to the river. Usually there are cow skeletons and all that lying around. Sometimes people go there to shoot at fattened tramplers. On the one side there’s a canal and a field. On the other, there’s a little village. Nothing much. Three or four houses along the road. There are more houses further down, but they’re all hidden in the trees. Yeah, you could hide there, and even hide the vehicles. What, you looking to camp out for the night? Must be a bad breakdown, huh.”
