The Weaponized: The Complete LitRPG Series

by Victor Deckard

  “Don’t you fucking move,” he yelled at the leader of the crew.

  The captain stopped moving and held his hands up. “Don’t shoot. I ain’t up to nothing.”

  “What were you trying to do?” Nate asked.

  The captain pointed at a nearby computer terminal and said, “I just wanted to show you the feed from the security cameras. If you watch it, you’ll see everything. You’ll see the ship being loaded with valuable minerals and the take-off from the asteroid. If it doesn’t prove to you that we’re just workers from the asteroid, then I don’t know what will.”

  Nate thought for a second, then nodded. “Okay, mate. Show it to me.”

  The British guys stepped closer to the computer terminal. The rest of us did not move.

  I did not need to watch the feed from the security cameras. I did not need to see the feed to know that this ship was not a pirate spaceship and those people were not pirates. They looked nothing like criminals, and this spacecraft was anything but a pirate spaceship designed for sudden attacks and quick disappearances. That was for damn sure.

  It was obvious that something was terribly wrong here. It did not make sense.

  A minute later, Nate returned to us.

  “I watched it, guys,” he said to us. “He’s telling the truth. The ship departed from the asteroid half an hour ago. Those are just workers. Not pirates. It’s a transportation ship. We were supposed to protect it from pirates, not to attack it.”

  “Why was it stationary?” I asked.

  “Because it was getting prepared to jump out of the system,” Nate replied.

  I nodded. “Figures.”

  “What is going on here?” Alyson asked quietly. “If they aren’t pirates, then why were we told to attack this ship?”

  “I have no idea,” Nate replied.

  “What do we do now?” The girl asked.

  Nate glanced at the crew members who were standing still, watching us intently. He shifted his eyes to the captain and said, “We need to talk it over. Give us a minute.”

  The old man simply nodded.

  “What is here to talk over?” Vlad whispered. “Our mission is to kill those people, so let’s do it and get the heck outta here.”

  “No,” Nate said, glaring at the Russian. “Our mission is to kill pirates. But those people are not pirates. It’s a huge misunderstanding.”

  Vlad silently eyed the British guy for a moment. He clearly just wanted to kill them all. He did not care in the least whether they were criminals or not.

  But in the end, the Russian shrugged and said, “Let’s have it your way.”

  He then used his Active Ability to deploy his battle drone. It materialized above our heads. All the crew members tensed at the sight. They had clearly never seen anything like that before. They had never seen drones appearing out of nowhere.

  “What the heck are you doing?” I asked.

  “Don’t you worry, Dave,” Vlad said, grinning at me. “Just want to take some precaution measure.”

  He glanced up at the battle drone hovering above our heads and said, “Keep an eye on them, Kolobok. If any of them so much as move a finger, kill them all.”

  I did not really know how his battle drone worked. Could it understand only specific commands? Or could it understand anything Vlad said to it?

  Yet I knew for sure that if any of the crew members tried to grab a weapon or do any harm to us, it would shred them to ribbons.

  The Russian returned his attention to Nate.

  “Okay, big boy,” Vlad said. “So what do you suggest?”

  Nate pondered on it for a second, then said, “Let’s just talk to Echo. He might know what is going on here.”

  “Okay.”

  “Echo, do you copy?” Nate said.

  A message from Echo immediately popped up before my eyes. It read, “Yes, warrior. What can I do for you?”

  “We’ve found the crew,” Nate said. “But they aren’t pirates. They are workers transporting valuable minerals from the mining colony. This is not a pirate spaceship. This is a transportation ship, the one we’re supposed to protect.”

  There was a brief pause, then another message emerged in my field of vision. “You are wrong, warrior. According to the data I am receiving, you are now where you are supposed to be—inside the pirate spaceship.”

  “That’s impossible, Echo,” Nate said. “There must’ve been some sort of mistake.”

  This time, a message from Echo popped up without any delay. It read, “No, there has been no mistake. You are where you are supposed to be—on the pirate spaceship.”

  “That’s impossible,” Nate repeated, raising his voice in agitation. “They showed us the feed from the ship’s security cameras. It’s a transportation ship, not a pirate one. There’s no doubt about it, Echo.”

  Another message from the AI emerged. “I repeat, you are wrong, warrior. You are on the pirate spaceship, so you should treat everyone you meet there as hostile.”

  “No,” Nate said. “It can’t be a pirate spaceship.”

  “What do we do?” Alyson asked. The girl was getting more and more anxious with every passing second.

  The girl was addressing the rest of us, but the AI must have thought she was asking him because he gave an answer to her question.

  “Your mission stays the same, warriors,” the message read. “You have got to kill everybody on that ship.”

  “Geez,” I said. “Are you serious?”

  “I am always serious,” came the reply from the AI.

  “That’s what I told you, guys,” Vlad said. “Those people are trying to bamboozle us. Because they are pirates.”

  “Wait a second, goddammit,” I said as the Russian turned to face the crew members.

  Without listening to me, he brought up his assault rifle to point them at the crew members.

  “Hold your horses, dammit,” I said as I stepped in front of Vlad, blocking his view of the crew members.

  “What do you want, Dave?” Vlad grumbled. “Get outta my way.”

  “Do you really want to kill them?” I asked, no stepping away from the Russian.

  “Just doing my job, that’s all,” he grumbled.

  “Our job is to deal with criminals,” I said as I stepped even closer to him. “But those people ain’t no criminals.”

  “You want to kiss me or what?” Vlad grumbled. “You’re standing too close to me. Step back or I’ll get the wrong idea.”

  “Do you really believe they are pirates?” I asked, still standing close to the Russian.

  “Yes, I do,” came the blunt reply.

  “They aren’t pirates, don’t you see?” I said. “How many pirate spaceships did we attack in the past six months? A dozen? More? Does this one look like any of them? Do those people look like pirates and bandits we’ve been dealing with for the past six months?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Vlad snarled at me. “None of this shit matters. You know why? Because Echo says they are enemies. So they are enemies. No matter what they are really are, they are enemies. Is that so hard to understand?”

  Before I could reply, he continued, “So get off my dick, Dave. Sure, you kind of an attractive boy, but I don’t swing that way.”

  He proceeded to shove me in the chest, pushing me away from him. I was going to tackle him as soon as he brought up his assault rifle again. Yet he did not.

  He did something else instead.

  “Kolobok, kill those motherfuckers all,” he suddenly yelled.

  The battle drone hovering above our heads opened up with its machine gun. The heavy-caliber rounds whizzed through the air to lance into the crew members, severing limbs, taking pieces of flesh out of their bodies, and even cutting them in half.

  “No,” Alyson cried out in terror.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I yelled.

  “Stop it, now,” Nate shouted.

  However, the battle
drone continued to fire at the crew members. It did not listen to us. Vlad was the only person whose instructions it obeyed. The crew members scrambled for cover as the battle drone continued to fire at them, the rounds drilling into their bodies, blood splattering over the walls and computer monitor screens.

  There was no way we could reason with Vlad or get his battle drone to stop firing. So Nate, Alyson, and I whipped our weapons up and started shooting at the flying robot. We kept a steady stream of fire on it until the battle drone finally exploded, pieces of machinery raining down on the floor.

  “What the hell did you do?” Vlad snarled at us. “Why in the world would you destroy Kolobok?”

  Moans and groans of dying people could be heard. The walls were splattered with blood, and pieces of torn flesh and severed limbs littered the floor. Most of the crew members were dead, and the others would soon join them because of the severe, mortal wounds Vlad’s drone inflicted on them. There was no way we could help them. We did not have any medical equipment and Alyson’s magic-like healing abilities worked only on the four of us.

  “What the bloody hell did you do?” Nate shot back at the Russian. “You killed them all!”

  “I did our job,” Vlad snarled at Nate. “It’s not my problem that you didn’t have the balls to do what you were supposed to do.”

  “They were not pirates, you arsehole,” Nate said. “They were just workers. They were innocent people!”

  “I don’t give a fuck about that,” Vlad shot back. “I don’t care about it all. All I care about is what our mission is. I do whatever Echo tells us to do. We work for him, so if he tells us to kill some people, we’ve got to kill them, no matter who or what they are.”

  Technically, we did not work for Echo, of course. Instead, we worked for whoever ran the The Weaponized organization. Yet I knew that Vlad was right. We did not have a choice but to do what Echo told us to. There seemed to be no way around it.

  “There clearly was some sort of mistake, you arsehole,” Nate continued to argue with the Russian. “Echo kept telling us they were pirates, but in fact, they were not. We had to figure out what’d caused the mistake and fix it to find out real pirates.”

  However, I did not think there actually were real pirates. A gut feeling was telling me that we had intentionally been misinformed. I was more than sure that the leaders of the organization we worked for had wanted us to attack the transportation ship. Why? My educated guess was that The Weaponized was not doing very well in terms of profit, so the leaders had intentionally given us a mission to board the transportation ship and kill the crew so the valuable minerals could be then stolen.

  Before Vlad could reply, a message from Echo suddenly popped up before my eyes. It read, “I hate to interrupt your conversation, warriors, but I need to remind you that you have to allow me to have full access to the ship’s systems. I’m sending a request to the main computer terminal. All you need to do is accept it.”

  Ignoring Nate glaring at him, Vlad walked to the main computer terminal and said, “Yeah, Echo, I got this.”

  “Don’t do it,” I shouted as I rushed after the Russian.

  However, before I could reach him, he made it to the computer terminal and punched a button on the monitor screen.

  Almost instantly after that, another message from Echo emerged in my field of vision, “Thank you. Give me a minute, please.”

  We did not have to wait a full minute, though. A few seconds later, Echo spoke up again. This time, however, he did not send us a message. Instead, his voice emanated from the loudspeakers installed all over the bridge.

  “I have just gotten full control of the ship, warriors,” Echo said. “I have also just scanned the ship and discovered that there are still a few crew members remaining in other parts of the ship.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Vlad said with a sinister smile on his face. “We’ll deal with them. Just point us in the right direction.”

  “You don’t have to deal with them, warrior,” Echo said.

  “Why?” Vlad asked, surprised.

  “Because I am already on it,” came the reply from the AI. “I have just shut the doors of the rooms they are currently in, boxing them in and cutting them off from the other parts of the ship. They have nowhere to flee. I am currently sucking the air out of the rooms they occupy, so in just a few minutes, they will not be able to breathe and die.”

  “Oh my God,” Alyson whispered.

  “Don’t do it, Echo,” Nate cried out desperately.

  “Do not worry, warriors,” Echo said without any emotion. “They will die painlessly. They will first pass out and then die in their sleep.”

  “They ain’t no pirates, goddammit,” I cried out. “You’re killing innocent people!”

  “You are wrong, warrior,” Echo said. “They are pirates. You have to believe me.”

  “Scan the cargo hold,” Nate said. “It must be full of valuable minerals. This means that it’s a transportation ship, not a pirate spacecraft.”

  “I have already done that,” Echo said. “There are actually valuable minerals in the cargo hold. It means that the pirates have already attacked the transportation ship and stolen the valuable minerals from it.”

  “Those people are not pirates,” Nate said.

  “Echo, you are making a huge mistake,” I said.

  “No,” came the reply. “I never make mistakes.”

  “Please,” Alyson whispered, her eyes quickly filling with tears. “Don’t kill them.”

  “It’s already done, warriors,” Echo said with no emotion in his voice. “All the pirates are dead. The four of you are the only living people on the ship now.”

  Alyson began to weep quietly.

  Nobody said anything for a brief moment.

  “So what do we do now, Echo?” Vlad asked.

  As soon as he asked the question, a message popped up before my eyes, notifying me that our objectives had just been updated.

  “Your mission is not over yet, warriors,” Echo said. “I just finished retrieving the information held on the ship’s hard drives and found the location of the pirate base. You need to destroy it.”

  “Sounds exciting,” Vlad said, with a grin on his face. “Where is it?”

  “Not far,” Echo said. “Check out your Mission Menu. You will find all the information you need to know there.”

  After checking out the Mission Menu, we found out that according to it, the pirate base was situated in the Sot Lodikar solar system—where we currently were— on the asteroid called Pertlos in the Sot Lodikar asteroid belt.

  “Wait a minute,” I said after reading the information. “The Pertlos asteroid? Isn’t it where the mining colony located?”

  “Yes,” Nate said. “The mining colony is situated on the Petrlos asteroid too. This is weird.”

  “What the hell are you two talking about?” Vlad asked. “Why do you find it is weird?”

  I just shook my head, amazed at how stupid Vlad was.

  “The asteroid isn’t all that big,” Nate said, looking at the Russian. “So do you really think pirates could set up a base there with the workers in the mining colony being no wiser?”

  Vlad just shrugged. He was not much of a thinker.

  “I don’t give a rat’s ass,” he said. “Let’s just get on with it, guys.”

  And he began walking to the door. He immediately stopped, though, when he realized that we did not follow him.

  “Geez,” he said. “What are you waiting for, slowpokes? Let’s fucking go.”

  We continued to just stand there, totally ignoring him, engrossed in our thoughts.

  Suddenly, it occurred to me what was going on.

  “I think it’s not the pirate base that Echo wants us to attack,” I said. “It must be the mining colony that is our target.”

  The same thought must have been crossed Nate’s mind too. He nodded and said, “Yes. It makes sense. Well, at least, it
sounds much more convincing than there being a pirate base right next to the mining colony.”

  “What do we do then, guys?” Alyson asked quietly.

  “I don’t know yet,” Nate said. “But we’re not going to attack the mining colony and kill any more innocent people.”

  “No way,” I said.

  “We’ve somehow got to convince Echo that this mission is a mistake,” Nate said.

  “Agreed,” I said. “But how?”

  “I don’t know yet. Any ideas?”

  “Nope,” I said. “But probably when we get there, Echo might realize he’s made a mistake. I mean, it’s probably impossible to confuse a mining colony with a pirate base, right?”

  “I’m not sure about that,” Nate said as he shook his head. “He still thinks it’s a pirate ship even though he’s scanned the ship and examined all the info on its hard drives. Echo either has glitched or we are intentionally being misinformed about this mission.”

  Vlad was just silently listening to us talking, shaking his head in disgust.

  “I’m sick and tired of you, pussies,” Vlad finally said with scorn in his voice. “Anyway, I’m gonna wait for you in the dropship. You can stay here, making up your mind. Don’t make me wait too long, though, or I’ll leave without you.”

  However, we all knew very well that the dropship would not leave without all of us on board. So it was a very stupid attempt to bluff on his part.

  And without waiting for us to reply, the Russian strode out of the bridge. His footsteps echoed in the distance, quickly fading away. We were silent for a little while, pondering on what we should do next and how to deal with our current situation. None of the three of us wanted any more innocent people to die.

  “Guys,” Alyson said quietly.

  Both Nate and I turned our heads to look at the girl. Under our gazes, she blushed and lowered her eyes.

  “What is it, Alyson?” Nate asked softly.

  The girl bit her lower lip. When she finally mustered the courage, she looked up at us and said, “I’ve been thinking… What if Echo and Vlad are right? What if it’s actually a pirate ship designed to look like an ordinary ship and those people are—were actually criminals? Or what if it’s the transportation ship and those people were pirates dressed up to look like workers? What if they hijacked the ship?”