External Threat (Reality Benders Book #2) LitRPG Series

by Michael Atamanov

  “I’ve heard that your little clique was found not guilty by Truth Seekers, but I still cannot overcome the hate and disgust I feel when I see your vile mugs. I wanna punch all of you in the head just to settle my nerves.”

  Danger Sense skill increased to level twenty-six!

  I basically understood the Free Captain, but still didn’t stop Ayni from translating. Apparently, the pirate didn’t like us at first glance, and now he was hesitating about whether to just stand up and walk away or kill us all and get drunk. So, inferring that this space pirate was a godly man, I told Ayni to answer that we not only had been exonerated, the great Priestess Leng Amiru herself promised me protection.

  For the pirate captain, as I was hoping, that was a sobering factor:

  “Alright, I won’t cut off your heads just yet. Human, I was told you wanted to meet with the leader of the Pride of the Bushy Shadow, something about a big payoff. Well, now is your chance to tell me everything about your offer. And pray I don’t conclude I was called away from important business for nothing.”

  Through Ayni, I repeated what I said before. There were six hundred seventy-five pounds of pure platinum ingots (and it was funny to hear the measurement units change in translation) waiting on a distant planet for a buyer unafraid of official Geckho borders or slow-witted customs officials. I also told him our price: three million Geckho crystals for the whole shipment. Next, I transparently hinted that this deal might be the first in a series of profitable transactions. And finally, I asked the Translator to say that the owner of this casino was also interested, and that she could provide us her own captain, but didn’t want to step on the Pride of the Bushy Shadow’s toes. So, she would take us up on this if they refused.

  Would you like to take the skill Trade?

  Would you like to take the skill Diplomacy?

  I turned down both suggestions. Gerd Abi Pan-Miay asked for details about the location of sale and the characteristics of the planet. Good thing I memorized the coordinates of my home world. It came in very handy! The Free Captain, although he was a Miyelonian by race, understood me perfectly, turned on his palmtop and entered the data.

  “There aren’t even maps of that system in the star atlas yet... It was discovered very recently, and the Geckho are in no rush to share that information. Also, such a dangerous voyage promises just two hundred thousand crypto. Subtract fuel and crew pay and you get...” the captain groaned, quickly making some calculations. “It’s not too tempting. Money like that won’t get my ass out of the chair, but someone in my Pride will take it. Two days ago, a young hot-headed Captain named Rikki Pan-Miis broke his interceptor on an asteroid while chasing down a Shiamiru. It wasn’t very serious damage, he lost just a wing and some armor but now he’s pretty hard-up for cash and would be glad to have any work to pay for repairs.”

  Two things in that story put me on guard. First, was he seriously going to send me into space on a damaged ship? After all, we would have to land in dense atmosphere on a fairly massive planet and doing that in a spaceship that had lost “just a wing and some armor” was nothing short of suicide. Second, how was this bad-luck captain going to pay if he was desperate for money himself? I boldly voiced both questions.

  “I’ll loan him the money for the repair and platinum!” the Free Captain snarled in dismay, lowering his empty drink from the stand. “And Rikki will pay off his debt with this voyage, so everything is fine.”

  Danger Sense skill increased to level twenty-seven!

  Timely warning! Although I could already sense that something was wrong with this offer, and they were planning to cheat me somehow. I just didn’t understand how. Should I try to find out?

  Failed Intelligence check.

  Action terminated. Magic Points exhausted.

  I couldn’t read the thoughts of the dangerous pirate, and that was a shame... In any case, the Pride of the Bushy Shadow’s ship seemed to be my only way back to Earth. All that talk about a backup option and a captain from the Pride of the Agile paw was only partially true and just as much bluster. The bartender hadn’t seen the casino owner today and had no idea if she’d be coming in any time soon. It was easily possible that the leader of the Pride of the Agile Paw would be gone for a long time, but I had to leave relatively shortly. In fact, I had just twelve hours. So, I didn’t have much choice. Either go to Miyelonian prison or take a risk and fly off with the criminal captain.

  I chose the second option and answered the Pride leader that I agreed, but I put forward two non-negotiable conditions: the “young and hot-headed” captain would only get his platinum after payment and not a second earlier, and I would be bringing two Miyelonians and lots of baggage.

  Gerd Abi Pan-Miay, who was slightly tipsy off the strong drink, turned on his radio and asked his subordinate a question, then conveyed the answer thirty seconds later:

  “You cannot bring more than one and a half tons of luggage. Rikki has a small interceptor, not a cargo ship! He sees no obstacles with the rest, though. His ship is a Tiopeo-Myhh II. It is at landing deck number eight, hangar four. They take off in one ummi. By then, the repair will be finished, and we will manage to collect the Geckho crystals.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two. Project Exodus

  THE FIRST THING I did after leaving the Free Captain was ask Ayni and the bartender, who was up collecting our empty glasses, where the nearest green zone was. I was pointed to the casino’s VIP box, which was now empty. As far as I understood, it was surrounded by forcefields on all sides, and had a luxurious interior, comfy furniture and its own secure communication terminal for private negotiations, during which anyone could exit to the real world to consult with colleagues or superiors. Exactly what I needed!

  For twenty crypto, I was allowed to use the VIP box and immediately left the game. I dismissed the suggestion to familiarize myself with my statistics, hurriedly climbed out of the virt pod and, running down the corn cob, raced to headquarters. I was looking for Ivan Lozovsky, but the diplomat was in the game, so I was received by faction leader Radugin himself.

  When I appeared, the slumping, tired and severely sleep-deprived Dome commander looked like a bespectacled scientist running up against a dissertation deadline. He folded up some topographic maps on his desk, and I chuckled. This was clearly Antipov’s doing. Leadership didn’t used to hide their maps or plans from visitors. In my momentary peek, I made out the six-sided nodes of our faction and those of our neighbors, many colored lines for defensive structures and circles radiating from points the Yellow Mountains. I suspected that, before I arrived, the faction leader was thinking over the optimal placement of artillery batteries, so our long-distance cannons could cover every part of the front during the quickly approaching Dark Faction invasion.

  But I was not much interested in military secrets or where our artillery would go. I had come with a different goal. I needed to know exactly where we’d meet the space merchants, so I could give the captain landing coordinates, and also tell the faction approximately when to expect our guests. But the main thing was that I needed to know what the faction wanted me to buy on the space station, where prices for any goods were many times lower than the Geckho space port.

  And although the question of where the merchants should land was already settled, there was a clear disconnect with the purchase list. My eyes climbed into my forehead in surprise when I heard the faction leader say that this issue had not yet been considered in detail, only discussed in general terms. Things like, “it would be nice to buy all this stuff in space for cheaper.” Beyond that, with unhidden horror I discovered that the faction didn’t yet have enough platinum, because they thought it would be a long time before the space merchants came if they ever did.

  “Come on, are you all a bunch of morons?!” Yes, I let my emotions get the better of me and started screaming. “The platinum buyer is coming tomorrow. It was a huge effort to convince him to fly to our podunk planet on the edge of the known universe, and now the goods I was hawking aren�
��t even here! None of the great spacefaring races will ever want to do business with us again!”

  “Calm down, Kirill. The platinum will be there, I promise! But as for the list, we need to first hold a meeting with the leaders of the main laboratories, both legions and the rest of our military divisions to figure out what they need.”

  “That’s all well and good,” I interrupted Radugin’s empty and untimely demagoguery, “but I need to place orders right now, because I need everything delivered and loaded onto the starship. Can you even imagine how insanely hard it was to get an advance on the three million crystals to buy weapons and vehicles? I was only given permission to bring one and a half tons of baggage! So, I can only buy things we really need, and I need to know what they are right away!”

  I didn’t draw his attention to the fact that my negotiations with the Free Captain had never touched on an advance, and that I was going to pay with my own money, then compensate myself later. I was afraid that, if I told him I had more than a million crystals, he simply wouldn’t believe me.

  Radugin asked for a minute and made a quick phone call. As far as I understood, it was to the leader of the First Legion. After that, the Dome leader told me their conclusions:

  “Buy guns, laser weapons, firearms, or whatever long-distance weaponry. Get ones for Automatic Weapons from level one hundred and up, Machineguns from seventy-five and Sniper from sixty. Buy as much as you can. That is our greatest need. Many of our veterans have long outgrown their weapons in level and skill, so we have a desperate need for quality arms. We need a large number, along with ammunition for whatever you buy. Beyond that, we need something that can short out electronics. EMP grenades, EMP mines, whatever radiation emitters they have. The mission is to stop Dark Faction shock antigravs like the flying Sio-Mi-Dori, as well as heavy armored monsters on the ground like the Sio-Ku-Tati, which we only know about from recon. Just buy a ton and a half of that, if possible. If there is any room or money left over, buy the rest at your own discretion!”

  On the way back to my virt pod, I was in a very pensive mood and was even somewhat despondent. My talk with the faction leader left an unpleasant impression. I naively thought my leaders had their shit together a bit more. “Buy whatever you think we’ll need.” “Yeah, we didn’t think you’d find a buyer for the platinum, so we didn’t actually get any.” “Just look. Whatever they’ve got, buy that.” Kindergarten, Velcro shoes, not some serious organization! But even that wasn’t the biggest nagging issue. It seemed that my Leng was not just tired and sleep-deprived, but emotionally drained and, seemingly, no longer especially believed we could defeat the Dark Faction. There seemed to be a lack of interest, and some kind of gloom, absent-mindedness and strange ambivalence. First, they say they’ll get the platinum and bring it into the game as quickly as possible, but then they say they considered the project unfeasible and low-priority...

  On my way to the corncob, I was surprised to meet gazes with a jogging Svetlana. She had the hood of her track suit down and didn’t notice me right away, but then sharply changed direction and ran up to me, taking out her headphones as she went. I reassured the bodyguards, who were preparing to stop the First Legion Assassin. Svetlana, as I immediately noticed, was running with weight. There were weights on her wrists and ankles, and I could see a broad belt with sheets of lead under her unbuttoned shirt.

  “Heya, Gnat. You just get up?” I couldn’t tell if the reddened lady was making a quip or really thought I had actually just emerged after last night’s raucous merrymaking.

  “I wish... Since last night, I’ve been in Miyelonian prison, gone to court and even met a space pirate in a space casino.”

  Svetlana whistled in surprise and looked at me with clear respect and even admiration. I then asked why she was exercising under the Dome and not in the game. After all, by running like this in the game that bends reality, she would not only level her stats and skills, she would also improve her body in the real world.

  “Yes, I know, Kirill. But you can’t only take care of your body in the game. After all, every minute there is regimented. You’re always going somewhere, crawling through swamps in camouflage or lying motionless for hours under the burning sun as you watch an enemy post through binoculars. But now I’m totally...” Svetlana looked at the bodyguards accompanying me in hesitation, but still continued. “You talk with faction leadership often enough. Have you heard of Project Exodus?”

  I shrugged my shoulders indefinitely. I hadn’t heard of it, but I didn’t want to reveal my ignorance.

  “Well, our guys keep saying the Dark Faction will attack in five days. I’ll be honest, not many of our soldiers believe we’ll be able to hold out. Last time, after all, we just got lucky and your raid helped get rid of enemy forces. They won’t make the same blunders again. Also, their next attack will be fiercer than the last. Our leadership also understands that perfectly so, one after the other, they’re sending recon groups to the opposite shore of the bay, past the Geckho space port. And they all have the same mission: find a place for us to build a base there for the so-called Operation Exodus. No one is saying it out loud, of course, but they all understand this is being done in case our capital node falls in the next few days.”

  I really didn’t like hearing about the defeatist attitude held by our soldiers, including the First Legion. I did not know if it was just Dark Faction propaganda, or skillfully conveyed disinformation, but it was damaging not only the morale of the H3 players. Another negative consequence was that our leadership was getting distracted and wasting valuable resources, reserves and people on cockamamie schemes totally unrelated to reinforcing our defenses.

  “That’s all crap, we’ll hold out!” I assured her, to which Svetlana gave a predatory chuckle:

  “Sure, no one is planning to throw their hands up and surrender. We’ll fight not for our lives, but to the death, and the enemy will have to pay dearly for every inch of our territory. But will we have the strength? Gnat, I’ve seen thousands and thousands of Dark Faction soldiers training at the firing ranges with my own eyes. I saw their new high-speed flying antigravs and heavy armored vehicles. They’re like our Peresvets but four times bigger, real terrestrial cruisers! There are rumors that our experts concluded we cannot destroy them with our current technology!”

  “I wonder how they managed to figure that out, if they haven’t seen any in real life, and cannot study real specimens,” I quipped.

  Svetlana wanted to answer but stumbled and looked at me, smiling in embarrassment. In the meandering stream of her thoughts, primarily revolving around the topic of weight issues and a new diet recommended by a friend, I managed to fish out the name of the person who told her those pernicious rumors. No, it was not Svetlana’s panicky fiancée as I assumed, but someone named Gleb Vorshinsky, an Engineer from the Prometheus. I didn’t know him, but I still made a note to check if he was working for the Dark Faction.

  I mean, this could easily have been just everyday human stupidity, or the Engineer wanting to look better informed than he really was for a pretty girl. But it also could have been intentional disinformation made to spread chaos and uncertainty in the H3 faction. The whole warped picture of the situation on the front was made up of such small depressing details, and that is what had the soldiers so down, and leadership screwing up.

  “Svetlana, that information is out of date,” I said, trying to make a confident face with a mysterious smile. “I was just talking to Radugin about that issue, and I’ll be bringing weapons from space that can destroy any Dark Faction vehicle, including their Sio-Ku-Tati tanks. By the way... Svetlana, you probably know better than our leaders: what do our recon groups need the most?! Weapons, observation equipment, maybe other gear...? Do you know? That’s what I thought! Then you have exactly five minutes. I promise that whatever you ask for will be at our base in a day and a half!”

  * * *

  WHEN I CAME BACK into the game, there was a surprise waiting. The merchant Gerd Ussh Veesh w
as trying to enter my VIP box. The Trillian was up on his hind legs, scraping his claws on the forcefield, causing bright sparks of electricity and clearly trying to get my attention. I quickly put the barrier down and started clearing the room, but it turned out my “crocodile” friend wanted to meet with me. Ussh Veesh spoke passable Geckho, so he asked to leave both of our subordinates outside and talk one on one. As soon as the defensive and sound-proof field had divided us from the outside world, the Trillian hissed:

  “I heard you’ll be leaving Medu-Ro IV soon and are planning to buy supplies.”

  I couldn’t hide my astonishment. How did he know that?! Anyway... I hadn’t exactly made a secret of the fact that I was looking for a starship. Also, I told my assistants and the pirate captains that I would be bringing cargo. Meanwhile, the merchant continued:

  “In your place, I would have given the Pride of the Bushy Shadow a wide berth. They are not reliable partners. Also, they’re greedy and crafty. But it is your choice, and I won’t meddle in your affairs. I came here to make an offer. I want to give you a discount on my wares as a good friend. It’s an excellent product, desired by absolutely everyone in the galaxy! And it is of particular interest to races new to the game that bends reality!”

  “And what do you trade in, Ussh Veesh?” I had to admit, the merchant had captivated my interest. Even with my vibrant imagination, I couldn’t think up anything wanted by everyone, especially new races.

  With clear pride, the space crocodile set out a whole range of small decorative items, then waited for my reaction. I glanced over his assortment without particular interest: gold rings with glimmering gemstones, earrings, necklaces, ornate bracelets... So, my friend Ussh Veesh was a jewelry merchant. But what need did I or my faction have for that? I strained to hold back a sigh of disappointment, and... it was good that I did. Just then, I noticed the items had special properties: