There was another chair, but Vlad did not take it. He remained standing, stealing suspicious glances around the room as if expecting someone to charge at him out of nowhere.
While it was not all that long since we had become a team, I already knew something about the Russian. Vlad was very suspicious and wary of everyone. It was especially the case when he found himself in a new place with people he knew nothing about.
Jennifer pointed at the last unoccupied chair, saying to Vlad, “You can sit.”
The Russian shook his head.
“I’m fine with standing,” he said.
The woman eyed him for a brief moment, then shrugged her shoulders.
“Suit yourself,” she said.
Vlad did not reply. I noticed that he still kept his right hand close to his holstered pistol. Knowing how trigger-happy he was, I did not like it.
I glanced at Nate and saw him looking at him. He did not say anything, but it was obvious that he was thinking the same thing.
Keep an eye on him, his eyes were telling me.
I nodded ever so slightly.
Nate then turned his head to look at the leader of the colony.
I also could not help but notice that Jennifer was armed too. She had a pistol in a holster on her right hip, and something was telling me that she was quite proficient with firearms. She looked very confident, and I knew for sure that she could handle herself.
“So, Jennifer,” Nate began, “what can you tell us about the creatures we have to take care of?”
“We’re having an insect problem here,” she said with a serious expression on her face.
We just watched her for a second, then Vlad began laughing so hard as if it had been the best joke he had ever heard. Jennifer stared at him with cold eyes but did not try to stop him from laughing his ass off.
When his fit of laughing abated somewhat, she said in a calm voice, “Are you done?”
The Russian met her eyes. When he saw that she was dead serious, he stopped laughing completely.
“So you’re not joking,” Vlad said.
“No, I am not,” the woman replied seriously. “This planet is pristine with heavy vegetation and millions of various species. The problem is that local incests are huge. There are bees and bugs the size of a domestic cat, scorpions as big as pickup trucks, and whatnot. One of my friends even once told me that he saw an arachnid the size of a two-story house lurking in the woods, though I’m not sure whether it’s true or whether he was drunk and imagined the whole thing.”
All of Vlad’s mirth dissipated.
“You gotta be shitting me,” the Russian said.
“I am not,” Jennifer replied.
“Insects the size of cars?” He asked, still not quite believing the woman.
“Yes,” the leader of the colony replied. “This is a common thing on virgin planets like this one where man has not yet made an impact. I’m surprised that you didn’t know that.”
“And how many are there overgrown insects here?” Vlad asked, squinting at the woman suspiciously.
“The whole planet is crawling with them,” Jennifer replied calmly.
Vlad suddenly became angry. “So you want us to kill them all? Are you fucking out of your mind?”
Before Nate or I could say anything to him, Jennifer beat us to it. “Of course I don’t expect you to kill all the insects living on this planet. To do that, you would need to blow up the whole planet.”
The leader of the colony stared at Vlad with cold eyes. She did not seem to be daunted by his fit of anger in the least.
“So what do we have to then?” Nate asked before Vlad opened his mouth. Seeing that the Russian was losing his temper, he must have decided to take over the conversation.
“I don’t need you to eliminate all life forms on this planet,” Jennifer replied. “I only hired you to deal with a particular pack of creatures that have been attacking our colony for the past two months.”
While unlike Vlad, Nate was polite and gentle, Jennifer was eyeing him as coldly as she had stared at Vlad a moment before.
Surprisingly enough, Vlad noted it too.
“What’s your problem, by the way?” Vlad asked bluntly.
“Excuse me?” Jennifer said, shifting her eyes to the Russian.
“You’re being overly aggressive toward us,” Vlad said. “I wonder why.”
“Look who’s talking,” I said. “Isn’t it you who’s always being aggressive toward other people?”
“I’m aggressive only when there’s a reason for me to be aggressive,” Vlad shot back. He nodded at Jennifer and added, “She’s been acting this way from the very beginning. Other colonists seemed to be angry with us too. You guys noted it as well. You said it yourselves, didn’t you?” He then shifted his eyes to the woman and added, “The colonists, including her, don’t like us much. I guess she’s got a reason for being an asshole.”
“Vlad,” Nate said, “watch what you’re saying. You are not—”
Without looking at Nate, the woman silenced him with a gesture.
“Okay,” the woman said through her teeth, glaring at Vlad. “You want to know why I’m being unfriendly? Then I’ll tell you.”
The blond Russian grinned. “I’m all ears. But keep it short, okay? My mom used to say that I had a short attention span.”
Ignoring the Russian’s last remark, Jennifer said, “Our ship dropped us on this planet a few months ago, just before winter came here. Then our colonization spaceship flew away, leaving us to fend for ourselves. Sure, we’d been given some supplies, but not too much. We’d also been given these shitty container homes to live in. But I’m not complaining, mind you. We hadn’t expected anything different. We’d known from the very beginning what we were going to sign up for. Life of a colonist isn’t easy, but we’d been ready for it. All of us had decided to leave civilization behind and start a new life on a virgin planet, each for their own reasons. So we survived the winter and after consuming all our supplies, began to live off the land. As you might’ve noticed, some of us have even already built login cabins to live in. So yeah, we know how to face problems and tackle them.”
“Yet you need our help,” Vlad said.
The leader of the colony looked at him coldly and said, “Yes. As I said, there’s a wide range of various overgrown insects living on the planet. Most of them were in a dormant state during the winter. When spring came, they emerged from the hibernation. So we encountered a new problem—lots of various overgrown insects. Luckily, not all of them turned out to be aggressive. We do our best not to get in the way of the insects, especially dangerous ones. Sometimes we’re successful and sometimes we are not. We’ve got some weapons and we know how to use them. So when we run into aggressive creatures, we fight them. Though, as I already said, we prefer not to engage them because there are way too many of them while we have only so many bullets.”
“So what’s the problem you can’t deal with?” Vlad asked impatiently. “What exactly do you need us for?”
“Two months ago, a group of aggressive creatures began to give us a hard time,” Jennifer explained. “We don’t know why but for some reason, they turned on us. Those creatures gather in large groups and attack our colony, sometimes at night, sometimes in broad daylight. In the two last months, they killed or abducted almost a hundred of us. If they keep it up—and it doesn’t look like they are gonna stop anytime soon—it won’t be long before they eradicate the entire population of our colony. And it seemed to be the creatures’ goal. They seem to be keen on killing us all.”
Jennifer made a pause. We were silent. Even Vlad kept his mouth shut, though he did not seem to be impressed much by what Jennifer had just told us.
“So one month ago, I contacted your organization, The Weaponized,” the woman continued, watching us with anger in her eyes. “We don’t have enough weapons and manpower do deal with the creatures, which is why I decided to hire mercenaries
from your organization.”
“You did the right choice,” Vlad said approvingly. “Rest assured, we’ll deal with your little insect problem.”
Something was bugging me. I looked at the leader of the colony and asked, “You said you reached out to The Weaponized a month ago, huh?”
“Yes,” Jennifer said. “I was told that a team of warriors would be dispatched to our planet as soon as possible. Yet it wasn’t until a month later that you’ve finally arrived. Took you so long to get here.”
I was thinking hard. Echo had told us that we would arrive on this planet in two days. I did not think that he had been lying. Since he was a machine, he was probably not even capable of lying. So it meant that Jennifer had reached out to The Weaponized long before Nate, Alyson, Vlad, and I were even transported to the space station. It probably meant that the organization we were now working for did not have enough manpower to get the jobs done in a timely manner.
The four of us might even have been the only warriors of the organization. However, it seemed unlikely to me. Echo had once said that our space station was one of the many secondary ones, so there had to be lots of other warriors. I wondered if they were ordinary people just like the four of us, taken from Earth in 2020 and forced to work for The Weaponized. And if it was the case, I also wondered how come nobody had noticed the mysterious disappearance of people after they used a Macro Envision headset to play a The Weaponized video game.
I was sure that it was real life, not a video game. The more time I spent in this place, the more sure of that I became. Jennifer Parker was one of the reasons for my belief. I could easily see the raw emotions in her eyes, everything from concern for the wellbeing of her colony and her fellow colonists to anger aimed at The Weaponized and the four of us as being a part of that organization. So there was no way she could be an NPC. No effing way. She was a real person, as real as the four of us.
“But we are finally here,” Vlad said with a smug grin on his face, bringing me back to the moment. “So you can forget about your worries. We’ll deal with the creatures that give you a hard time.”
Jennifer had just told us that lots of colonists had been killed or abducted by the aggressive creatures, but Vlad did not care about it one bit. And I knew why. He was still one hundred percent sure that it was just a video game, so he probably believed that there was no reason for him to be affected by some NPCs having been killed.
Or he was really such an asshole that he did not give a rat’s ass about real people’s lives too.
Jennifer shook her head, then glared at the Russian and said, “So you wanted to know why I and some of the other colonists were angry with you? I’ll tell you. One of the reasons is that it took you so long to get here. In the last month, about fifty people were slain by the creatures. If you’d gotten here earlier, as your organization had promised, those people would probably have been still alive.” Jennifer made a brief pause, then added, “By the way, your organization forced us to pay in advance, but that’s the least of my concerns. The wellbeing of my people is way more important than money to me.”
Now we knew why the leader of the colony, as well as some of the other colonists, were angry with us. The Weaponized had taken the job one month before, but it was not until two days ago that the four of us had accepted the mission. If there were other warriors at the organization, they must have decided not to bother with this job. Probably because their level had been much higher than the level requirement for this mission.
I felt bad for Jennifer and other colonists and was starting to really dislike the organization I was forced to work for. I could tell that Nate and Alyson felt the same way. As to the Russian, he still did not seem to care about the colonists. Not that I had expected something different from him.
However, Jennifer was not done yet.
“And another reason for my unfriendliness is you yourselves,” the woman said, watching the four of us with cold eyes.
“May I ask what do you mean by that?” Nate asked.
“Nothing personal,” the woman said, “but you guys don’t look like tough mercenaries we’ve been waiting for. I’ve been expecting experienced and armed-to-the-teeth fighters. What I’ve gotten instead is you, a bunch of kids armed with nothing more than lousy pistols.”
I had to admit that the leader of the colony had a point.
Not all of us agreed with her, though.
“Kids?” Vlad snarled. “I’m twenty-three, goddammit! Watch what you are saying, lady!”
Jennifer rolled her eyes and said, “That’s why I called you a kid. The rest of you don’t look older than you.”
The leader of the colony then turned her head slightly to look at Alyson.
“And you,” she said. “I don’t mean to offend you, but you seem very young and innocent. You seem to be the youngest here. How old are you, girl? You look very young to me. You look like you are only eighteen or nineteen years old.”
Alyson lowered her eyes, her cheeks blushing. She said something so quietly I did not make out the words.
“What did you say?” Jennifer asked. “I didn’t catch that.”
“She says she’s twenty-one,” Nate said. “Her name is Alyson, by the way.”
“As you see, she’s the only female on our team,” Vlad said with something like scorn in his voice. “I think she’s here only to fill some political quota. You, Americans, seem to be really obsessed with all that bullshit.”
Jennifer lifted an eyebrow. “Americans?”
“Don’t mind him,” I said. “He calls everyone who speaks English an American. He thinks he’s being funny or something.”
Nate turned to glare at the Russian and said, “Didn’t I tell you not to pick on Alyson?”
Vlad met his eyes and held up his hands in a placating gesture. “Did I say something wrong? I don’t think I said something offending to her or anybody else here.”
Jennifer watched us for a moment, then shook her head. “And you also don’t even seem to be getting along well with one another.”
“I agree with you,” Vlad said. “They like to bully me for nothing all the time.”
Nate opened his mouth to say something, but Jennifer beat him to it. “Anyway, like I said, you guys don’t strike me as tough mercenaries. That’s why I feel like The Weaponized deceived us. They made us pay in advance, then promised to dispatch a team of experienced fighters as soon as possible. However, what they did instead was made us wait for a month before sending in a bunch of kids. We’ve got a very serious problem here that needs to be resolved ASAP. We’re getting killed here, but your organization doesn’t seem to care about it one bit. Your organization is a total joke.”
She was right. While we were dressed in uniforms, none of us really looked like military personnel. Even Nate did not. While he was tall and strong with bulging biceps and triceps, he did not look like a tough military guy with years of battle experience under his belt.
However, while she was right about us to some extent, she did not know that the pistols we had on us were not our only weapons. We were also armed with something along the lines of superpowers. The nanotrites—micro supercomputers coursing through our veins—allowed us to use so-called dark energy to create powerful spells. We were something like battle mages.
Echo had told me that it was scientists from The Weaponized who had invented nanotrites. The warriors on the organization’s payroll might have been the only people in the whole Universe who had such technology at their disposal. If it was the case, then while the four of us lacked military experience, our small team had a great advantage over ordinary mercenaries and soldiers.
Also, I once again could not help but notice that everything here was like in real life. There was no way it could be a video game. Jennifer was reasoning like a real person. An NPC would not comment on our appearance or doubted whether we were up to the task at hand. At least NPCs in video games usually did not make such remarks even if the
player’s character looked very young or inexperienced.
“We’ll see about that,” Vlad snarled, jolting me back from my reverie. “Can you finally point us in the right direction so we can begin dealing with your problem?”
Nate glanced at him, then shifted his eyes to Jennifer and said, “I agree with him. Can you tell us what kind of creatures we need to deal with and where to find them?”
“Yes,” Vlad said. “Can’t wait to finally jump into action. My fingers are so itchy right now. I need to shoot something real fast.”
The Russian’s last sentence made Nate, Alyson, and me to jerk our heads in his direction to make sure he was not pointing his pistol at any of us.
He noticed us staring at him and grinned, “It’s just an expression. Don’t take it too seriously, guys.”
He then laughed loudly. He really enjoyed keeping us on edge.
“Okay,” the woman said. “The creatures you have to take care of are spiders.”
“Spiders?” Vlad said, grinning. “Seriously?” He turned his head to look at me and the other two teammates of ours. “Guys, turns out we don’t even need pistols for this job. The only thing we need for this job is a fly swatter.”
He laughed loudly at his own joke. However, nobody joined him in his mirth. A second later, he must have realized something because he stopped laughing and became very grim. He frowned and went silent for a bit as if thinking about something.
He then turned his head to look at Jennifer and said, “Wait a minute. You mean those spiders are oversized, too?”
“Yes,” Jennifer replied. “An average spider is about the size of a wolf. Some of them are smaller than that, the others a little bigger.”
“Great,” Vlad said, then smirked. “Anyway, you tried to deal with those spiders and failed, but that’s okay. You aren’t supposed to be all that tough. After all, you are just colonists, not soldiers. So leave your spider problem to the professionals. We’ll take care of it.”
“Hey,” Jennifer said with steel in her voice. “If you think that colonists aren’t tough, then you are wrong. We failed to stop the spiders not because we are not tough, but because they are too strong. If you think this is gonna be an easy job, then you are wrong.”
The Weaponized: The Complete LitRPG Series Page 12