Fair enough.
But with his last Cold Brotherhood mission and the credits he’d just earned, his account with the Star League Central Bank was sitting at 30,950Cr.
Drinking alone at a bar was a hit-or-miss thing. Sometimes you got a crowd that could take a hint and leave a guy alone with his thoughts and a glass of whiskey. Other nights, no matter how dour a guy looked, no matter how gruff and standoffish, some busybody would come over to try and cheer him up.
“Hey, you King?” tonight’s busybody asked by way of greeting. Since it was plastered across a nameplate on his chest, Reggie assumed the question was just an icebreaker.
“I wonder about that sometimes,” Reggie replied, looking down through the bottom of his glass. Nothing the ship served was as strong as it was supposed to be. For how much he could see through the amber liquid, it hadn’t dulled the grinding gears in his brain. “I look like me, sound like me… bleep, I even smell like me. Can you answer me that? How’s this game know what the bleep I should smell like?”
The busybody pilot’s nameplate read “Santos, Guard 11,” and he had the look of a man who wanted to cheer someone up. His smile gleamed out through a bushy jungle of black beard. Reggie’s unexpectedly philosophical response had sagged the corners of that friendly grin but not wiped it away entirely. “Couldn’t say. I’m not a programmer. Hey, nice work out there today. Saw you tagging along with Specker. That Elephant’s the bleep, huh?”
“Oh yeah,” Reggie agreed, pausing to drain the last of his watered-down whiskey. “The bleepiest.”
Santos scowled. “That’s not what I meant.”
Reggie sighed and shook his head. He weighed the option of going up to the bar against the inconvenience of continuing the conversation partly sober. “Even in a game, I lose people.”
“Bleep, man,” Santos said, easing his way out of the booth. “It’s just a game. Bleep.” Shaking his head, the House Virgo welcome committee left Reggie in peace again.
He had pilot points to spend as well as credits.
Staring through the distortion of the bottom of his glass, the world looked less real. Somehow, that felt like the first honest view he’d had of this mental prison. If he were to fill it back up with booze, he might forget all about Dr. Zimmerman and the real world for a while.
Instead, Reggie stood and headed for the exit. The glass mug dangled limply from his hand until he let go. It shattered. Heads turned at the sound, but no one took much interest. Some NPC would clean up the mess.
Reggie headed off to find a mirror and level up. The plus sign on his nameplate stared up at him accusingly every time he glanced down at it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
[CMD: 5]
Reggie didn’t know if he was being an idiot or just reacting to the loss of the Four Stooges. It shouldn’t have hit him so hard, he knew. They were just NPCs, after all. They were on board the command ship somewhere; their juggernauts were down in the hangar.
No one had died died.
But that was the problem. Three real men had. It wasn’t Mogh, LaTrie, Shen, and Jonto that were bothering Reggie. It was the reminder that Charles ‘Chaz’ Blackwell, Duncan Murphy, and Brandon Davis weren’t playing a virtual reality game. They’d died in that Abrams, back a million miles away in the real world.
Maybe if Reggie had been a better commander, he could have done something to save them. He sure as hell could have done more to save the Four Stooges, but they didn’t matter, not in any real sense. But it probably didn’t help that Mogh looked a little like Chaz.
Needing something to do, some activity to keep his mind occupied, Reggie headed for the hangar. Vortex was standing at attention, paint gleaming, weapons shined, polished, and reloaded.
Reggie’s gaze fell on the two Beam Cannon-Ms that rode on Vortex’s shoulders. For the low, low price of 30,000Cr, he could swap one of them out for a Plasma Launcher.
Watching the Heavy Plasma Launcher on Specker’s Elephant was the closest thing Reggie had seen to the relative power of a main battle tank on the battlefield. Grind forward, force a position against foes without the armor penetration to pose a serious threat, and put some APFSDS rounds through their armor.
Idly, Reggie wondered how those depleted uranium rounds would fare against Vortex.
Blowing a sigh, Reggie ran a hand through his scrub-brush hair. “Spending too much time in here.” There was little point in comparing the two. His Abrams operated on real-world physics. Here, whatever some programmer decided was how it would work. It was like arguing Superman vs. Batman; whoever wrote the comic got to decide the outcome.
“Bleep it.”
Reggie watched the Plasma Launcher as its 3D representation spun slowly on the kiosk’s screen, showing off the weapon from every angle. His finger stabbed down on the Buy button.
[Purchased: Plasma Launcher]
[-30,000Cr]
[Install Now? Y/N]
There was no option for “fuck yeah.”
Reggie chose yes.
For the next five minutes, Reggie watched overhead cranes and robotic armatures remove the Beam Cannon-M from Vortex’s right shoulder and spirit it off to some nebulous storage area with Reggie’s name attached. He could swap back anytime he liked, but the credits weren’t coming back.
But when the Plasma Launcher came drifting over, dangling from the claw of a crane ten stories above him, he knew he’d made the right choice. The Plasma Launcher might be heavier and run hotter than the Beam Cannon-M, but it packed a mean punch.
Next time Reggie got into close quarters combat with another juggernaut, he wouldn’t be stuck below his lasers’ optimal range. The Plasma Launcher was optimal from 0-600m and still packed a kick out to 800m.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
By the time the Cold Brotherhood was all back together, Reggie was itching to go. He’d spent hours poring over missions, most of them wildly inappropriate for a platoon of his level. He’d scoped out missions that recommended four platoons of level 15+ pilots, missions that required specific—and expensive—modules equipped, and missions that were primarily extra-vehicular and required the platoons made for Rambo wannabes.
But along the way Reggie picked out a few with the real potential for a good curb stomping. While he needed to pitch a good reason for the rest of the platoon to want to come along, what Reggie was really looking for was a firing range to try out his new Plasma Launcher—a shooting gallery of sorts.
“Hey, boss,” Chase said, raising his free hand in a quick wave as he slid into the booth across from Reggie in the crew lounge. With his other hand, he raised a mug of root beer to his lips. After a long swig, he gasped. “You look like a guy who needs 65 tons of steel and weapons systems wrapped around him. Got us a mission?”
It never ceased to amaze him how Chase kept track of all the in-game stats, not just for his own gear, but for everyone else’s. Not that Chase had any way of knowing, but Reggie had upped the weight on Vortex by 2 tons.
“Yeah, I think so,” Reggie replied.
Chase dug out a tablet computer and slid it across the table while Reggie drank some of his tepid, watered-down beer. “Is it on this list?”
Reggie scanned the tablet. It seemed that Chase had done some similar searching on his own. “Nope. These all look fine, but I’ve got another in mind.”
Taking up the computer and flipping it around one-handed, Chase glanced over it again. “I took any mission that I could project a 90 percent success rate on and sorted them by potential credit and XP gain. What was your method?”
Reggie clenched his jaw. Tugging the tablet free of Chase’s hand, he set down his mug and found the mission he’d chosen.
When Chase took his computer back, a smirk spread on his face. “OK. I’ll bite. What’d you buy?”
Reggie blinked, dumbfounded. “What makes you think I bought anything?” There was no point denying it, but Chase’s perceptiveness made him curious. Was he that transparent?
“This is lik
e a 99.99 percent success rate mission. You might even pull this bleep off solo, assuming the hostile jugs didn’t just scatter and run. The payout’s not terri-bad, but it’s pretty crap. You want to kick puppies, and that’s usually a sign that someone got a shiny new toy that makes holes in things.”
“It’s a Plasma Launcher.”
Chase broke out in an ear-to-ear grin. “I knew it. It’s as easy a tell as the mid-life crisis Porsche. And that’s a mighty fine weapon, I must say. Stats don’t bear it out for my build until level 8, when you can take Energy Management 3, but it’s still a solid piece of ordnance. I’m in. Let’s see that baby bleep some bleep up.”
“You’re OK with the low profit margin?” Reggie asked with level glare. Chase was almost scientific in his approach to the game. He was less a tanker than he was military theorist.
“Bleep yeah,” Chase replied. “I mean, why wouldn’t I be? Free money and a show? Count me in. Just remember to pick up insurance. Running the Wolverine naked was a risk. Now that you’re upping the load out with custom weaponry, you’d be an idiot to take the risk.”
“Insurance?”
“You own a car out in the real world?”
“Yeah.”
Chased paused for a drink to steel himself. “Well, it’s like that. You go out and bleep up your car, the insurance pays for it. You still pay for gas, tolls, the occasional trip through a car wash—”
“Always washed mine by hand,” Reggie commented.
Chase waved away the interruption. “Sure you did. Point is, there’s a cutoff—normal everyday expense versus ‘oh, bleep, my car!’ Same thing here. Star League Insurance covers you anywhere in game for a -30 percent ding in your mission profits. House Virgo offers the same for just 25 percent, but it only applies to missions for House Virgo.”
“Why would I run missions for another faction?” Reggie asked.
Chase shrugged. “I dunno. Great offer comes by, someone poaches you, vengeance for getting fragged in a mission that was for House Virgo. A million reasons. Also keeps working if you leave House Virgo for some reason. Point is, ammo and repairs are normal expenses in this business. But if your bleep gets its bleep bleeped, then you’re bleeped in the bleep without insurance.”
It was these talks with Chase that reminded Reggie to get the in-game chat filters removed one of these days. The rest of the time he was able to follow a conversation pretty well despite the mild censoring.
“So you’re saying if I total my ride, insurance covers it.”
“100 percent,” Chase replied with a nod. “Better to give up 25 percent of your mission scratch than have to shell out for a new juggernaut that you poured profits from fifty missions into.”
“Chase, King, there you guys are!” Kim called out. He had Iris and Barclay with him. “We were over at another table. Kept hearing this buzz in my ear that I swear was the ghost of Diablo’s pilot.”
“You guys ready to ride?” Chase asked. “King here’s got himself a Plasma Launcher, and we’re going to be having a little competition to see who can kill the most light juggernauts.”
“I’m game,” Iris said. “Might cost some extra missiles, but I’ll throw down. Any rules about kill-stealing?”
“I might need to bring a rental,” Barclay said glumly. “My brand new Imp isn’t going to win any contests.”
“Nah,” Chase said. “It’s not a real competition. It’s a mission. You’ll rack of bonus XP for Larson and Kim needing your target data.”
Reggie stood and took a deep breath to clear his head. He hadn’t anticipated the positive response to a mission that was mainly for showboating and playing with a new weapon system. “Well, let’s head out for some Shoot-and-Loot.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The drop ship didn’t even bother leaving the ground after discharging Reggie and the rest of the Cold Brotherhood. They were on a dry, rocky region nestled in among a range of mountains. A shallow river ran along the valley floor, not deep enough for a juggernaut to use as a supplemental heat sink.
[Primary Objective: Destroy Juggernaut Factory #1]
[Primary Objective: Destroy Enemy Juggernauts 0/60]
[Secondary Objective: Do Not Destroy Communications Relay]
[Secondary Objective: Broadcast Message to Juki-sen Heavy Industry]
The background on this mission had tickled Reggie’s fancy. Juki-sen Heavy Industry had set up a manufacturing site for Otsu class light juggernauts inside Risun territory, effectively throwing their weight behind House Virgo’s rival.
Every faction used juggernauts from every manufacturer, but certain factions played favorites. House Virgo tended to favor Gottpanzer, maker of the Jackal and Wolverine as well as the Elephant piloted by Specker. But Kim and Iris both used Juki-sen’s Chi-Ri model, and Barclay’s new Imp was made by Bernstein Manufacturing.
But one of the manufacturers plopping down a factory in House Risun territory was a tacit show of favoritism that couldn’t be allowed to stand. If Risun had been neutral or friendly, it was the sort of minor transgression that was too much trouble to voice an objection about.
However, House Risun wasn’t a neutral faction anymore for the pilots of House Virgo, and the Cold Brotherhood wasn’t going to be objecting with their voices.
“Keep it tight,” Reggie radioed out. “No stunts. We stay in formation until we’ve got the facility in range. Number one priority will be hitting the production storage site before they can scramble the workers to pilot a defense force. Play this right, we might only have a dozen piloted jugs coming back at us. XP is the same whether we take out piloted units or ones still in the shrink wrap.”
Reggie piloted Vortex in the vanguard. Despite Barclay’s new scouting juggernaut, the Wolverine still had a better sensor package. Barclay only had speed and stealth on his side in the meantime.
The factory lay ahead of them, upstream along the nameless, winding river. According to the briefing maps, it was dug into the side of four mountains, with bridges spanning the different sites of the compound. It was like someone had looked at the Lost Boys’ tree houses from Peter Pan and decided to try the concept with mountains.
The universe of Armored Souls was nothing if not a test bed for improbable architecture.
“Can I ask that we pick up the pace on this one?” Iris asked. “My kid’s got a thing in the morning.”
It was the closest any of them had gotten to discussing real-world events in the game. Reggie hadn’t even known Iris was married; now that he thought about it, he still didn’t.
“Roger that, Larson,” Reggie radioed, remembering that not all of his platoon mates were on a first-name basis. Hell, Reggie probably wouldn’t have been, if not for that brief flirtatious period that seemed to have gone by the wayside.
Reggie feathered the accelerator, edging up to 38kph. Realizing that this wasn’t a real-world vehicle, he slammed it the rest of the way open and Vortex topped out at 40kph. The extra weight had slowed his top speed by 2kph.
It was still a wonder to him that terrain hardly seemed to matter to the juggernauts. A conceit to the game design, no doubt, lending credibility to the questionable military soundness of walking robots as tanks.
“Over that ridgeline, we ought to be able to see something,” Reggie radioed. “Barclay—”
“On it,” Barclay said with a sigh. “I’ll get eyes and share targets.”
“Affirmative,” Reggie replied. “You tag ‘em, we bag ‘em.”
TARGET DATA RECEIVED
Reggie’s mini-map blossomed with bogeys all over the southwestern mountain in the complex. An artificial plateau was laid out with a 6 by 10 grid of Otsu light juggernauts.
“Everyone got that?” Reggie asked.
Iris, Kim, and Chase all confirmed that they had.
Vortex came up behind Barclay’s Imp and dodged around him. “This is our own personal fishing barrel. Biggest threat out there is friendly fire.”
“A paradox,” Chase observed sagel
y.
“Stuff it,” Reggie snapped. “No sneaking shots past friendlies. No firing into someone else’s brawl. I’m inspecting these heaps when we get back to the command ship, and if I find any scorch marks on the bleeps of these juggernauts, I’ll be putting my boot up someone’s bleep. Is that understood?”
“Loud and clear,” Kim replied.
“Yeeeeeeees,” Barclay moaned.
“Five by five, boss,” Chase added.
“Nah, I’m gonna shoot y’all in the back,” Iris radioed out to everyone. “If that’s what it takes to win this thing.”
“Preeeeetty sure she’s just joking,” Barclay observed.
Reggie was inclined to hammer home his point when movements among the array of parked Otsus suggested that Juki-sen knew they were here.
“Weapons hot,” Reggie ordered. “Anyone conserving heat with idle systems, power ‘em up. No stragglers. No snipers. These things are only dangerous to Barclay, so get in there and mop up.”
1800m range.
Iris and Kim launched missiles as soon as Reggie gave the go ahead.
Wherever one hit, an Otsu exploded. The little scouts were unarmored. The average SUV had as much protection. What the typical Otsu loaded for battle carried was sensor packages, anti-personnel weaponry, and speed.
[Primary Objective: Destroy Enemy Juggernauts 4/60]
The piloted Otsus dodged missiles. It’s not that they could react fast enough that they could pull Matrix-like acrobatics. But they were moving at speeds that the missiles’ guidance systems couldn’t compensate for. No one in the Cold Brotherhood had any advanced guidance systems installed, and nobody was springing for expensive missiles with improved maneuverability.
Reggie closed the distance and fired off MRM-2s. Two more exploded.
[Primary Objective: Destroy Enemy Juggernauts 6/60]
Iris and Kim fired again.
[Primary Objective: Destroy Enemy Juggernauts 10/60]
Dead Mech Walking: a mech LitRPG novel (Armored Souls Book 1) Page 14