Dead Mech Walking: a mech LitRPG novel (Armored Souls Book 1)

by Xavier P. Hunter

  “Cold Brotherhood, fall in and rendezvous at Juliet-Three-Seven,” Reggie ordered. “That open-air stadium is ours to secure. Barclay, get eyes on it.”

  “Roger that,” Barclay said with a quaver in his voice. He still wasn’t over the crash landing. Hearing Specker’s speech about how not everyone made it down might not have been the best thing for morale. These weren’t hardened soldiers, and some of them took this game as more real than it actually was.

  Reggie led the remaining four juggernauts of the Cold Brotherhood down a deserted road that acted as a valley between skyscrapers. Reggie sped ahead in his Imp and disappeared from sight around a corner.

  “This is eerie,” Kim said with trepidation. “Where the bleep is everyone?”

  “Maintain formation,” Reggie radioed. “Be on alert for concealed hostiles. They’re not ignoring us; they’re picking their ambush.”

  TARGET DATA RECEIVED

  “Got two baddies patrolling the stadium,” Barclay reported. “A Chi-Ha and a Tengu.”

  Reggie zoomed the mini-map on the stadium environment. The facility was shaped like the Roman Colosseum, a circular shape stretched into an oval with high walls surrounding seats that descended toward the interior. The two House Risun juggernauts Barclay had tagged were patrolling the upper reaches of the stadium seating.

  That was the position Reggie wanted to occupy.

  “Approach from Mike-Three-Six,” Reggie ordered. “Chase, you’re on point with me. We’ll draw the first salvo of missiles. Focus laser fire on incoming missiles. Kim, Larson, you’ll be returning fire. Primary target is the Chi-Ha.”

  “Roger that.”

  “Got it.”

  “As you command.” Chase took the lingo less seriously, but of the bunch, he was the one Reggie most trusted to carry out the order. That bought him a little leeway.

  “Man, I want an apartment in this city,” Barclay commented. “Think we can rent here once we conquer it? I mean, if we don’t trash these buildings, this one I’m hiding behind has a great view right down into the stadium.”

  “What makes you think they play anything you’d want to watch?” Chase asked. “For all you know, House Risun hosts cricket games or some bleep.”

  “For a view like that, I’d learn to like cricket.”

  Reggie checked the range, measuring from their intended cover to the targets. 250m. It might be 300m by the time they arrived as the two juggernauts’ patrol route took them away from the rendezvous. “Enough chatter. Prepare to engage enemy forces.”

  Reggie took the first shot.

  [Chi-Ha - 18% To Hit]

  He pulled the trigger anyway and missed. A chunk of the stadium flew apart in a spray of steel and concrete shrapnel.

  An instant later, the errant shot produced the effect Reggie had been counting on. The two House Risun juggernauts paused their patrol route and fired off a salvo of missiles.

  Reggie and Chase opened fire with lasers. Medium- and long-range beam cannons lit the afternoon sky like a rock concert, complete with pyrotechnics as warheads detonated in midair.

  One of the missiles made it through the net of lasers, slamming Vortex in the torso and shaving 3 points off his armor.

  “Target locked,” Iris reported. “Commencing fire.”

  “Ditto that,” Kim added.

  The two Chi-Ris launched MRM-2s into the sky, smoke trails mixing midair with the quickly dispersing traces of the House Risun missiles. The Chi-Ha was on the light side for a medium juggernaut. Most of that weight savings came at the expense of armor.

  “Got two more coming in,” Barclay reported.

  TARGET DATA RECEIVED

  “Bleep,” Reggie swore before switching on the radio. “We’ve got a pair of Chi-To medium jugs inbound, currently at Golf-Four-Zero and closing fast. Chase, on my six. We’re heading inside.”

  “Covering you,” Iris replied.

  Reggie wished he had the time to take the platoon aside and teach them military terminology. Iris and Kim were the equivalent of artillery support. They might lay down suppression fire, but with missiles, that was inefficient. Cover fire was limited to direct fire weapons and line of sight. Iris wasn’t even going to be able to see Vortex and Diablo once the two juggernauts entered the stadium.

  The front gate was barred but fell easily to a Plasma Launcher blast and a 65-ton kick. Reggie and Chase stormed forward—

  Straight into an ambush.

  [Shinigami - 85% To Hit]

  The encounter was at point-blank range. Reggie fired the instant the massive juggernaut came into view. Plasma tore into the torso of the Shinigami.

  By the time Reggie tagged the new juggernaut in his targeting system, it was already showing the 7 missing hit points his Plasma Launcher had taken from its frontal armor. Just 73 more points of armor to punch through and he’d have a shot at the thing’s main systems.

  If only it were that easy.

  The Shinigami was one of Juki-sen’s heavier product offerings, second only to the super-heavy Yamato class. It had wide-set legs that crouched low, allowing the massive juggernaut to block all hope of passage into the stadium. Every surface of it was painted a garish purple that gleamed in the scant light of fluorescents that lined the ceiling. It was equipped with a pair of arm-mounted Mass Drivers and appeared to be zeroing in on Reggie with both of them.

  Reggie closed his eyes and winced in anticipation.

  Vortex rocked under the one-two punch of both Mass Drivers slamming home. When Reggie opened his eyes, he saw the Shinigami off balance from the recoil. As soon as his crosshairs settled into an 80 percent chance to hit, he fired his Plasma Launcher again.

  But his torso armor had taken a beating. He was down to 56/80 hit points after just the one exchange.

  Chase worked to get a firing angle past Vortex in the tight quarters. Their concrete alleyway connecting the street to the stadium interior was akin to fighting in an elevator. There was just no room to maneuver.

  Yet somehow Chase managed to snap off a few laser blasts from the right arm and shoulder off Diablo without catching Reggie in the crossfire.

  Vortex shook again with the impact of another two shots from the Shinigami. 32/80 hit points left on Reggie’s frontal armor.

  “Target the Mass Drivers, you bleep,” Chase snapped. “Or do you like getting hammered like a five-dollar bleep.”

  Reggie realized that Chase had a point. He couldn’t trade blows at this rate. Without room to maneuver, his options were limited. Backing out would get them into the line of fire of the approaching Chi-Tos. Staying put was going to get Vortex destroyed.

  [Shinigami - 71% To Hit]

  Those points in Gunnery paid off as Reggie’s shot hit the Shinigami’s right-arm Mass Driver. When it returned fire, it was off balance, and the shot missed.

  There was only one Mass Driver firing now.

  Chase pushed in beside Reggie, Diablo and Vortex crammed together tight enough that they might get stuck in the corridor. But Chase fired lasers from three different weapon mounts and disabled the other Mass Driver.

  “Who’s laughing now, punk?” Chase taunted.

  The Shinigami charged.

  “Oh, beeeeep!” Chase screamed.

  But the Shinigami didn’t have room to build up a head of steam. The three juggernauts locked together like a Sumo match with an interloper. While the Shinigami was the largest of the three, a Jackal and Wolverine combined to outweigh and outpower it.

  Plus, no wrestling match lasts long if only one side is armed.

  It took the better part of two minutes, including a brief period where the Shinigami got its right Mass Driver back online, but Reggie and Chase managed to subdue it.

  “Entrance clear,” Reggie radioed. “Watch your step coming in.”

  “About time,” Kim called back. “We wasted half our medium missiles taking out that Tengu.”

  Reggie hadn’t even had the spare attention to keep track of the battle above. But now it was time t
o leverage the high ground they’d just won. Climbing the rows of steel bleacher seats ten rows at a time, Vortex’s metallic feet stomped through the flimsy benches to the concrete layer that supported them.

  At the highest reaches of the stadium, in seats that would have offered a view of the playing field akin to watching ants playing sports, Reggie came across the burnt hulks of the Chi-Ha and Tengu that Kim and Iris had taken out from below. Testing out the strength of the Wolverine’s stock Grossemacht 960 reactor, he grabbed the Chi-Ha and lifted it overhead.

  Pieces of the juggernaut in his hands were missing—half of one arm and the entire head. Still, it had to have weighed over 30 tons. With a sympathetic grunt of effort, Reggie had Vortex heave it over the edge of the stadium.

  The Chi-Ha fell fifteen stories to smash on the pavement far below. It was enough of a shock to detonate the remaining munitions stores, sending a shock wave rumbling through the stadium that Reggie could feel through Vortex’s feet.

  “Incoming,” Barclay reported.

  TARGET DATA RECEIVED

  Barclay clarified even as Reggie checked his mini-map. “Coming in on the train. Just a pair of Ferrets, but they’re packing missiles.”

  Across the stadium, some hundred meters from the far side, there was an elevated rail and a magnetic train riding it. Tall concrete pillars rose from ground level to support the rail, which ran to and fro across the city, through buildings and over the river that ran through the center of town.

  “Pfft. Idiots,” Chase commented. He aimed a Beam Cannon-L at the rail and opened fire. The blue beam of the laser turned the rail ahead of the train glowing red.

  But the train stopped before it reached the danger point. The two juggernauts atop it unleashed salvos of missiles.

  “Nice work, numb nuts,” Kim snapped as the missiles snakes toward him trailing lines of gray smoke. He steered his Chi-Ri in a frantic yet vain effort to evade the missiles’ homing capabilities. “Shoot the jugs, not the train.”

  “Bleep the train,” Iris radioed. “Take out the supports.” Following her own advice, Iris’s volley of missiles slammed into two different support pillars, shattering both of them. In slow motion, the track sagged, then groaned, then gave way beneath the weight of a train and two light juggernauts that were suddenly more than it could bear.

  “Above us! Rockets!” Barclay shouted. The distant, tinkling wind chime of shattered glass drew attention to the fact that Reggie and the Cold Brotherhood didn’t have the high ground after all. Infantry in the surrounding buildings had sprung their trap. “They’ve got rockets! Take cover!”

  But Reggie heard the warning in another man’s voice.

  In that instant, he was back in the desert, in that town whose name escaped memory. The city was a husk of rubble masquerading as buildings, covered in subversive graffiti in a language Reggie was glad he couldn’t read. The column was just passing through; there was nothing worth stopping for.

  “Above us! Rockets!” someone had shouted in a light southern twang. “Take cover!”

  Infantry riding in trucks jumped down and scattered for cover, rifles at the ready. The local guide and the camera crew hunkered down in the shadow of Reggie’s Abrams. The tanks in the column had nowhere to hide. You couldn’t slip one into an alley or dive behind something solid—they were the solidest thing for miles in any direction.

  Rockets sizzled down, striking the tank in front of Reggie’s. The armor took the brunt of it as the commander ducked inside the turret to safety.

  Reggie could have done the same. Maybe he should have. But he was in position to spot targets and had command of a gun that could take whole floors out of those buildings the insurgents were using as cover.

  “We’ve got hostiles at—”

  But that was as far as Reggie got. A glint caught in his peripheral vision got him to turn his head just in time to see a man with his face behind a cloth wrap, a shoulder-mounted anti-tank rocket aimed right for him.

  What happened next was a fuzz in Reggie’s memory. He was already moving when he saw the plume of exhaust out the back of the rocket launcher. How he survived was a mystery.

  Chaz, Murray, and Davis had been inside the Abrams. They hadn’t seen the rocket coming.

  “King!” Chase shouted, shaking Reggie from his hijacking down memory lane. “Get your bleep in gear, and do something!”

  Vortex was on fire. Incendiary warheads shook the Wolverine in a constant rain. None were doing much damage, but the aggregate effect was rising temperatures. Damage was slowly adding up to the armor on Vortex’s head and right arm. Both were down to the red range.

  Head: 13/40

  Right Arm: 2/20

  Torso: 29/80

  On two adjacent sides of the stadium, 90 degrees apart, entire floors of the skyscrapers had their windows blown out. Soldiers on foot were using mobile missile launchers in staggering numbers. There had to have been forty or more in each building.

  “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot,” Kim snapped. “Who the bleep decided this was fair?”

  “No. No! NO!” Barclay screamed, sending a chill into Reggie’s bones.

  Barclay’s Imp went dark in the platoon status console.

  The rest of them weren’t faring much better. Yellows and reds marred every juggernaut. Chase seemed to be in the best shape simply because he was slashing some of the rockets out of the air with lasers before they reached him.

  “I can’t fire,” Reggie reported. “I’m over temp.”

  “Override,” Chase snapped. “Suck it up, and deal with the pain.” From the grit in his voice, Reggie could tell the kid was taking his own advice.

  “Out of ammo,” Iris reported just after an explosion cleared out a portion of the rocketeers in the western building. “I’m making a break for it.”

  As Iris raced for the tunnel out of the stadium, Reggie saw on the mini-map that there was a patrol of Rhinos headed her way. Someone else in the invasion force had tagged them and shared the location with Reggie’s platoon. Apparently, Iris hadn’t noticed them.

  “Iris, stand your ground. Use Miniguns if you have to, but—”

  “Bleep you, Reggie. I’m not sticking around to—”

  Iris’s juggernaut went dark after a quick flash of red in the torso armor.

  Tears welled in Reggie’s eyes, blurring his vision. What the fuck was that about? This was a game, dammit! Iris wasn’t dead. Barclay wasn’t dead. Chaz, Murray, and Davis weren’t dead. None of them were dead. Nobody was ever dead. There was no such thing as dying anymore. The whole world was a game, and it was all equally fake. Memories, game missions; US Army, House Virgo. Factions and fictions.

  “Earth to King,” Chase called out. “Be a nice time shoot back.”

  Kim rattled off Minigun fire, but he might as well have been on another planet. Reggie sat motionless. Vortex stood motionless, flammable liquid splattered across its armor, burning away.

  Alarms blared in the cockpit. Flames crept into Reggie’s field of view through the windshield.

  “King!” someone shouted. It sounded like Chaz.

  Reggie saw the missile coming.

  Sgt. King had seen the rocket coming.

  “King, look out!”

  Darkness. Just like before.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Reggie’s eyes snapped wide. He drew in a sharp breath. The stinging odor of rubbing alcohol and the digital clock mounted into the ceiling told him exactly where he was.

  2:59:58

  It counted down steadily as he watched.

  “Warrior King,” the perky AI nurse voice cooed. “You’re awake. Don’t worry. We’ll have you fixed up in no time.”

  But Reggie remembered the attack. He remembered staring the Grim Reaper in the eye and diving for cover. He’d felt the bony claws scratching the back of his skull, trying to grab hold and drag Reggie down to hell along with Chaz, Murray, and Davis.

  “Get me the bleep out of here!” Reggie demanded.

  The
AI nurse smiled condescendingly. “Please select the Logout option with your eyes closed if you’d like to leave Armored Souls while your body is repaired.”

  Reggie tried not to watch as armatures equipped with needles, scalpels, and other grisly tools all plunged in and out of the force field, clamping his body to the bed.

  He squeezed his eyes shut.

  Logout, he thought.

  Before he even had time to be relieved, the game world vanished.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Reggie awoke for the second time in under a minute. He gasped for breath but found himself in darkness. Something was draped over his eyes. He tried to reach up to remove it, but his arm was held fast. So was his other arm, both legs… in fact, Reggie could barely budge.

  Suddenly, all the muscles in Reggie’s right leg tensed involuntarily, locking up and straining against the unyielding cloth straps holding it in place. After a few seconds, the muscles relaxed, then with a tingling buzz, tensed up again.

  There was a splash of water, a cloth dunking into a bucket. He’d washed his own pickup often enough to know that distinctive noise anywhere. The cloth was warm and wet as it gently rubbed along his chest. Someone was bathing him. By the lilting voice as she hummed tunelessly, it was a woman.

  Reggie relaxed. For the moment, the mysteries could wait.

  The bathing paused. “Good morning, Sgt. King. Enjoying your bath, I see.” It was Nurse Mallet.

  Reggie grimaced. There wasn’t slipping much by a nurse, let alone anything so biologically obvious. “Wasn’t going to get in the way of you doing your job.”

  It felt good to talk to a real, flesh-and-blood person. Armored Souls created such a vivid illusion of life that it was easy to fall into the trap of believing the fiction.

  Nurse Mallet removed the black cloth that had been draped over Reggie’s eyes. He squeezed shut his eyes at the sudden onslaught of brightness. “Well, I’ve got other things I can be doing. Let’s get you unhooked, and you can take a shower on your own.”

  She started with the gaming rig. As soon as that was unhooked, Reggie flexed his neck to work loose stiff muscles. He also looked down.