Limitless Lands Book 3: Retribution (A LitRPG Adventure)

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Limitless Lands Book 3: Retribution (A LitRPG Adventure) Page 13

by Dean Henegar


  I wondered what had happened to make Wrend so bitter toward officers, as well as what crime had dropped him into prisoner status. Wrend would say nothing to me except to acknowledge orders or make suggestions for the training of the men. The veiled threats and attacks had ceased since our last fight in the arena. I was curious if his change was due to the AI acknowledging and enforcing the agreement with Septimus for us to fight together, or if Wrend himself was plotting something deeper. I would have to remain on my guard.

  In the evenings, we set camp at dusk, the prisoners helping to erect the tents. Since so much had to be left behind when we fled from Asif, there were only tents for Septimus and some of his guards. The soldier prisoners slept in the open under a tarp, chained by our legs to a stake in the ground. The other prisoners who didn’t make the cut as soldiers were forced to do the same, without the dubious comfort of a tarp over their heads. The food situation wasn’t too great, either. Fleeing had left little time to secure proper provisions and it was discovered on our second day out that Septimus had been scammed by the merchant providing our food; several of the barrels of food that he had bought were spoiled and inedible, the spoiled food hidden under a small layer of edible rations. The limited supplies we had brought with us would not last us to Shraza.

  That night after the ruined food supplies were found and we were safely chained to the ground, Wrend spoke. He had suspiciously had himself chained next to me and I was prepared to fend off any attack. Tessel’s promise would end the sergeant easily, but his loss would hamper my chances in the coming arena fights.

  “Raytak, want to explain what you think you were doing in that last fight?” Wrend blurted out.

  “I’m not sure what you mean? We fought as a team, it was a hard fight, but we came out on top,” I whispered back to him, not wanting to disturb the other soldiers who were trying to sleep.

  “What I mean is that barbarian had me dead to rights. You could have let him finish the blow and I wouldn’t be around to bother you again. Why did you step up and take the blow yourself? More than that, why have you been treating me like a real nco? What’s your angle Raytak, what are you trying to pull here?” Wrend asked, his voice strangely absent of hostility or his usual, poorly spoken vernacular. I lay in thought for a moment, trying to find a way to explain my actions to the sergeant.

  “I don’t know what your beef is with all officers. Most are good soldiers themselves and look out for their troops. There are some bad apples of course. I’m here because of one myself. I was framed by an Imperium field inspector named Leighton. I don’t need to know your story to know that somewhere in that hate-filled head of yours is also a solid nco who still remembers what it means to be a soldier,” I paused for a moment before continuing, figuring the best path with Wrend was to be direct and honest.

  “In that last fight, I must admit, I thought about letting that barbarian finish you. I’m not immune to wanting payback for the way you’ve treated me since I arrived, but I could never let a soldier under my command die if it was in my power to save him. You know as well as I do that people die in war and that sometimes we are forced to order good men to their deaths in order to win a battle. To just watch a soldier under my command die when it’s in my power to stop it . . . that’s just not the person I am, and one that I pray I never become,” I offered, not sure how Wrend would take my statement. He lay their silent for a long time before replying.

  “What do you mean ‘under your command?’ You know as well as I do that we’re just playing at soldier to amuse Septimus and to get better treatment while we’re here. You don’t believe that fat dirtbag would let us go, do you? Should we somehow defeat all our other foes, we would be far too valuable for Septimus to just let go. He would do something underhanded, like sell us off for a huge bag of coin to another ludus before he would see any of us freed,” Wrend said. The old anger in his voice was back.

  “That’s just it, Wrend, I can’t change what Septimus does. We have the chance to be soldiers again as we fight. I want to regain my honor in the eyes of the Imperium and in the eyes of my friends. I’m not playing at soldier, I am a soldier and will behave that way until the day I die. You have a choice to make Wrend: be a cynical prisoner playing at being an nco, or be the soldier I can tell that you once were. The choice is yours on how you react to the situation you find yourself in, not mine, not Septimus’,” I told Wrend. I could hear the man rustling as he lay, trying to come to a decision. Wrend let out a sigh and began his tale.

  “It was nearly a year ago. I was a senior nco in the reserves, living on the frontier zone of Ipland. Some fool necromancer in the zone next to ours had gathered a horde of zombies, skeletons, and such. The necromancer decided he was tired of ruling just his little zone in the wilds and decided to invade Ipland. The Imperium immediately sent for reinforcements as my unit and the other reserves were called up to help. I commanded the men from my village, and we were folded into an understrength regular legion company. The company was commanded by some new officer that I would have sworn was younger than the eighteen years minimum age of a soldier.

  “That pompous kid thought he knew it all. He was some noble brat whose father had bought him an officer’s commission, thinking that military service would look good for his son’s political aspirations later in life. The kid must have had some strong connections, since the legion commander assigned us to sit back and guard a nice, safe crossroads. The crossroads was far from the front lines, but near our home village. All in all, it was a good posting and our families were even able to bring us home cooked meals now and again.

  “We soon received word that the Necromancer and his army had been defeated by the legion. Imperium forces were mopping up the remains of the undead and we were to stay in our position until the all-clear was given. We would then be released from active duty and sent back to our village. The officer could claim that he masterfully defended against an evil undead horde and all would be well. Unfortunately, the necromancer was not alone. He had infiltrated several bands of cultists into the zone that did his bidding. The cultists began raising undead at the graveyards found in every small settlement or village they came across.

  “Word reached us to watch for any activity, and three days after that notice we received a frantic rider from our village warning that there were undead approaching from the other direction. I formed the men up and made ready to move to defend our village when the officer stopped me. He had the gall to tell us to stand down and we were to ‘defend’ this crossroads. The kid was shaking in his boots with fear. He had no desire to be anywhere near the undead, and in his cowardice, he ordered us to leave our families defenseless. He told us that he had already received a message about the nearby undead and that one of the other units was already in place to take care of the problem.

  “The coward lied. We found out a day later when the few survivors from our village fled down the crossroads we were protecting. I confronted the officer. He told me that it was just an unimportant small village and that these things will happen. Perhaps that other unit was sent somewhere else more important, he told us. To that spoiled, cowardly brat . . . my family, my wife and three kids, were unimportant. I had heard enough. I pulled him from his horse and broke his fool neck. Showed him what was important. The men from the reserves and I hustled to the village while the rest of the regular army soldiers ran off to report our mutiny.

  “The village was empty when we arrived. Other than a few bodies that were too mutilated to be reanimated by the cultists, nothing was left save for the blood splatters. My wife, my three little girls, gone. The girls were only four years old, triplets that my wife was so proud of. She loved to give them matching outfits and set up tea parties for them to have with their daddy. They were everything to me, and they died so a pompous coward could improve his political chances later in life. We sat there numb for hours until a squadron of Imperium cavalry finally arrived to arrest us. Many of the men fought back and were killed. I was too st
unned to resist and was taken prisoner. The remainder of the undead were defeated over the next few days, I later heard.

  “Now at night, I can only wonder what happened to my wife and daughters, my dreams filled with horrifying visions of my family stalking the land as undead . . . killed while I did nothing to save them. I was a good sergeant and followed orders. A fool’s orders. Orders that killed my family . . . and I did nothing when I could have saved them.” Wrend finished his tragic tale, choking up at the end. I let him gather himself before I replied.

  “I don’t know what to tell you, Wrend. You’ve faced a tragedy that was no fault of your own. The fault lies with the coward that gave you the orders to stand down. I was injured years ago in my military service and have lost much of my memory. I have no memories of my family. I know I have one but can’t remember anything about them. Are they still alive? How old are my children . . . do I even have children, or grandchildren, for that matter? I don’t know, but I fight on in the hopes that the memories will return. I fight on for the men beside me.

  Even if I never recover, I know that my skill in battle may mean that another soldier under my command will make it home. Maybe just one more soldier will get to spend the rest of his days with his wife and children. For that, and for the hope that I will remember my family once again, I fight. I ask that you fight at my side and not against me Wrend. Help me command these few so that some of them might be spared the tragedy that you have seen. Should you decide not to, I understand, just don’t get in my way as I try to save myself and as many of the others as I can,” I said with finality.

  “I get that you’re not like that other officer, Raytak. I didn’t want to believe . . . it’s so much easier to hate than to see what’s in front of me. I know better than to judge one man by the actions of others. My wife would be appalled at the way I’ve behaved. In her memory and the memory of my children, I’ll fight at your side, Raytak. We’ll train up these men and destroy any foes they place against us in the arena. We’ll even cut down Septimus if he goes back on his word,” Wrend vowed.

  “Don’t worry about Septimus, I have a plan for that. We’ll win our way into the Grand Melee at the capitol. If . . . when we win that, the emperor himself will grant us the Rudis, the sword of freedom. Septimus can do nothing at that point. We will be free men, exonerated in the eyes of the Imperium.” I said with a confidence I didn’t really feel. The Grand Melee was long way and lot of battles into the future.

  That night marked another five-day interval and I was briefly disconnected from the game while the medpod was replenished. For the first time while entering the real world, I thought I heard voices. Even so, I couldn’t make out what was said, and everything faded away as the processing power of the AI retreated from my mind, leaving me lost once again.

  Chapter 13

  Trey woke with a start, momentarily forgetting where he was. Realization hit him that he was in his mother’s hospital room at Vanderbilt Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee. The hospital had been selected to host the first non-veteran patients in the medpod program. He was exhausted from the long day of work as well as the near three-hour drive to the hospital from Knoxville. His boss had been kind enough to give him a few days off to work remotely from his hotel in Nashville while he oversaw his mother’s care. It was work related since Trey was also in charge of the medpod program for the company.

  The beeping from his mother’s medpod had woken him up, the pod signaling that it was time to change out the medications. A Dr. Nasif entered, someone who Trey hadn’t met before. Trey stood and introduced himself.

  “Good evening, doctor, I’m Trey Raytak from Qualitranos and this is my mother,” Trey said while gesturing toward his mother’s medpod.

  “Yes, it’s good to finally meet you. I’m the university coordinator for the medpod project. We hope this device will prove successful in a variety of treatments,” the doctor said. Like most doctors, he begged off shaking hands; working in a building full of infectious diseases tends to discourage handshaking. The doctor began to check his dataslate and review the patient’s status. Trey remained silent while he let the doctor work.

  “Your mother appears to be responding well to the treatment. Her vitals are stable, but there has been significant damage to her heart as well as parts of her brain from both the stroke and the subsequent heart attack she suffered. I wish we could have gotten her into the medpod a week earlier, then we could have perhaps avoided some of the damage,” Dr. Nasif advised. The doctor took on a serious demeanor and sat on the rolling stool next to Trey after finishing up loading medications into the medpod.

  “I don’t think you have had the most recent summary of your mother’s condition. I’ll send the data over to your device, but I wanted to advise you in person. When the AI scanned the patient, it was discovered that your mother had developed a malignant tumor in her brain attached to the pons. The pons is part of the brain stem and contains . . . well, a lot of things that are important to survival. I know you have some medical training from your position in the company, but I don’t want to overwhelm you with terminology. The tumor is serious, but the AI believes there is a chance for treatment.

  “The nanobots are turning out to be exceptional at microsurgery and have been able to shrink the size of the tumor. It will take some time before we know more, several weeks at least to see how the treatment progresses and how Natalie responds. I don’t want to get your hopes up too much. We’re in new territory here with the device your company has produced,” the doctor informed Trey.

  Trey felt like he had taken yet another blow. He had felt so much relief when his mom had finally been placed in the medpod, thinking the danger had passed. Now this? Cancer? He wasn’t sure how many more blows he could take. Every day, Trey felt like he was being stretched to the breaking point, pulled between caring for his father, now his mother, finding time for Lauren and Veronica, not to mention his increasing responsibilities at work.

  “Thank you, doctor. I appreciate you telling it to me straight,” Trey mumbled. Dr. Nasif nodded, noting the change in demeanor from Trey.

  “I know you have a lot on your plate now, Trey, but there was something else I wanted to discuss with you and see if it might be something your company could help with?” Nasif asked. Trey seemed to snap out of it; work allowed him to focus on the task at hand, forgetting about everything else for a time.

  “Sure doctor, what can we help with?” Trey replied.

  “Thank you. In addition to my other duties, I’m also part of the research team here at the hospital. My research focus is on neuroscience and its practical application in the field of addiction research. We have developed excellent medications in the last few years to combat and break the physical addictions that drugs have on a person, but the psychological addiction often remains the hardest part to break.

  “The vicious withdrawal symptoms are very hard to combat, despite the new medicines. People will often begin to feel the psychological craving for their drug of choice as soon as the treatment medication wears off, despite no longer being physically addicted. Once they leave treatment, they often find themselves back in the unsafe environment they started their addiction in.” Nasif paused to pull up some information on his dataslate and share it with Trey.

  “Back a few decades ago, only thirty percent of addicts stayed clean after entering a treatment program for their addiction. With our newest advances that percentage has increased to fifty percent. While better, that means that half of the people suffering from some form of drug dependence will return to their destructive behavior.

  “This has a devastating effect not only on the patient, but also on their family and friends. I want to see if using the medpod would improve our treatment practices. Patients could be placed into a supportive virtual environment, see and feel what their life could be like without drugs. While they are in the virtual environment, we can treat their chemical dependence and have them avoid any of the painful withdrawal symptoms. Could
you help us in setting up a medpod trial for this? I know your focus has been on trauma and more serious medical conditions, but providing a more effective treatment for drug addicts would be a godsend,” Dr. Nasif said as he pled his case.

  Trey could feel the conviction in the man’s voice. He knew that his company was looking into further applications. Trey could see if Qualitranos was able to tweak the AI to help in this type of treatment.

  “I’m not sure what’s possible, but I’ll definitely get my people to contact Meditronax and see what it would take to make it happen. I’m sure the physical medpod device can do it, but the catch would be if the AI was able to help or not. Our current AI, Clio, is well versed in the medical fields we initially considered for the medpods, but may be limited in what you’re needing. I will find out and get back to you in the next week. Worst case scenario is that we would have to grow a new AI, which could take up to a decade . . . but would give a potential solution in the future,” Trey offered, excited at the possibility of new applications for the medpod.

  Dr. Nasif thanked him for his time and let Trey know that he would send updates on Natalie’s condition whenever there was new information. The doctor knew it was very long drive to the hospital here and that Trey would not be able to visit in-person as much as he would like to. Trey said goodbye to his mother for the evening and made his way back to the hotel, having earlier reserved one of its VR meeting spaces for the company update meeting tonight. He had just enough time to stop and grab some tacos at a fast food place before the meeting.

  Trey logged into the meeting, waiting as the virtual table with all the participants loaded. The delay was much more noticeable here at the hotel; their systems were a bit outdated and in need of an upgrade.

  “All right folks, we’ll keep this a short meeting as I know it’s a late one. Let’s get right to it with the game division, how are things shaping up?” Chairman Raines asked. One of the gaming division managers had been tasked to give the update and Trey had to suppress a smile at the nervous expression on the junior manager’s face. The guy looked terrified to report to the chairman. Trey could remember that he had the same reaction the first time he had to speak at the “big” update meeting.

 

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