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

by Xavier P. Hunter

  “I was thinking, doc,” Reggie said, changing the subject before he lost his way on the tangents about word choice. “If I can conquer this Mechromancer guy, would that be proof enough that I’m recovered? You know, fit for duty again? This whole platoon business is really clearing my head up. Making me see thing in a new light.”

  Dr. Zimmerman tapped a finger to his lips. “How about this? You deal with your nemesis in Armored Souls, then we’ll address your situation directly.” The psychiatrist moved around behind the pod, where Reggie couldn’t turn to see him.

  “Sounds like a—”

  But Dr. Zimmerman had done something to the gaming rig, and Reggie was on his way back into the game before he could finish the sentence.

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  Reggie did a little research on his own, trying to compare maps of Star League space and the surrounding border regions to his confrontations with The Mechromancer. It was arduous work, made doubly so by the apparent hand-waving on the part of the developers. Travel times were fuzzy. Distances between star systems weren’t always a match from map to map.

  When Frank logged back in, Reggie knew by the crash of billiard balls coming from the rec room. Giving up on finding an instant answer, Reggie joined the old Dogface for a few games.

  The two of them drank from the tap at the bar, put Valhalla West’s boxing game on the television, and smoked cigars. Reggie had never so much as tried a cigarette as a kid, but there was no lung cancer in Armored Souls—Frank claimed as much, anyway.

  “Those kids, not a one of them’s got the gumption to do what we did,” Frank grumbled as Reggie lined up a shot on the five-ball.

  “Do,” Reggie corrected. “I might be laid up, but I’m officially active duty. Once I get back into a real, treads-and-turret tank, I might not be able to get into Armored Souls much.”

  “It’s addictive, isn’t it?” Frank asked. “Being important. Making a difference. Couldn’t go back to a life of mowing lawns or packing meat. Enemies of every race and creed put six bullets into that old carcass of mine. Army doctors pulled six back out and sewed up the holes. Five times I had a chance to make my excuses and crawl back to civilian life—one of ‘em was a two-fer, before ya ask. But every time I looked in the mirror, I saw a guy with a bandaged up hole in him. I said to myself, ‘but at least I don’t have to sell homeowner’s insurance for a living’ and went right back out to get shot at some more.”

  Reggie just shook his head. He knew exactly what Frank meant. “Yeah. Lost three good boys in the attack that landed me in the shop. And all I seem to think about is ways to get back to it.”

  “Not sure I could go back,” Frank said. He lowered his head to regard Reggie from under a scowling brow. “And not because I’m a buck five in years. Wrangling these walking beasties is a bleep of a lot of fun. Everyone gets to be Godzilla when they pilot a juggernaut.”

  “Hey, guys!” Chase called out as he strode into the rec room. “We up for some bully-hunting?”

  Reggie was still hanging on Frank’s last suggestion, that he couldn’t go back to driving a tank after experiencing the exhilaration of piloting a juggernaut. Could Reggie?

  “Hey, sport,” Frank called out. “Reggie here’s off in la-la-land. Grab a cue, and pinch hit.”

  Chase selected a cue from the wall rack and made a show of inspecting it like it wasn’t a perfectly formed asset from a game environment. “I talked to Lin. She’s gonna be on soon. Said it would be as soon as she finished filing a restraining order, but I’m pretty sure that was a joke. Pretty sure.”

  “Well, the first thing is going to be deciding where to look,” Reggie said. He replaced his own cue in the rack, content to let Chase take over the game. If he wasn’t going to take the search seriously, how could he expect the rest of them to?

  Before long, June and Lin showed up, and the five of them gathered around the couches to brainstorm.

  “I’ve yet to come up with a pattern to the attacks,” Reggie said. “There isn’t enough to pin him to a location or a transport company, or anything like that.”

  “Well, I’ve got the Rumormonger perk,” June said. “I can go looking on forums, maybe hitch a ride out to a bar or one of the merc service ships. Ask around, and I’m sure I can get some leads.”

  “I’ve got a better idea,” Lin chimed in. “Yulong is equipped with a data warfare rig. I hardly use it because it’s too slow for combat situations, but I might be able to sniff some packets and backtrace an operator ID to a planet.”

  Chase growled in the back of his throat. “I love it when you talk nerdy.”

  “How long will each method take?” Reggie asked, looking from one woman to the other.

  “I can get you something within the hour,” Lin promised.

  June sighed. “Mine’s better intel, I guarantee it. But I can’t say how long it might take.”

  “Any chance of it being under an hour?” Reggie asked.

  June shook her head.

  Reggie spread his hands. “Then, Lin, spotlight’s all yours. Get us a target.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  The results of Lin’s data-scraping were in, and the results weren’t pretty. Planetary surveys of the officially uninhabited planetoid reported it to have a lethal atmosphere. Benzene, methane, chlorine—if it was deadly to humans, this orbiting ball of rock had it.

  The drop ship set down, and Reggie’s platoon disembarked. Every pilot was wearing an environmental suit inside their cockpit, in case there was any breach that allowed the caustic air to get inside. June was the only one who already owned a suit; the rest had dipped into last missions profits and bought new.

  Human-sized gear always seemed cheap compared to arming a juggernaut. 500Cr for a lifesaving outfit seemed like a steal.

  “Be on the lookout,” Reggie said. “June, on point. Everyone watch your temperature gauges.”

  In addition to being toxic, this nameless backwater planetoid was also volcanically active. The ash-blackened landscape was cracked and torn with fissures, many still glowing with the heat of magma just below the surface.

  “I wonder what real estate goes for around here?” Chase wondered aloud.

  “It’s ours if we want it,” June replied. “Just file paperwork with the Star League once this is over. Pay a few taxes and—”

  “Borrrring,” Chase cut her off. “You lost me at taxes and paperwork.”

  “The signal came from that mountain chain over there, the one that looks like a row of cat ears,” Lin radioed to the platoon. This mission was her baby. She’d found interstellar data traffic that indicated The Mechromancer’s base was here.

  Reggie had been dying to try this. “Hold on a sec.” He pressed a button on his console, OKing the messages that popped up for everyone.

  [Primary Objective: Find The Mechromancer’s Lair]

  [Primary Objective: Destroy The Mechromancer]

  [Secondary Objective: Nobody Die]

  “Hey,” Chase objected. “That’s not what I signed up for. Who said anything about nobody dying?”

  Since there had been no third party to pay them to hunt down The Mechromancer, Reggie felt the need to dig into Armored Souls’ player-generated mission system.

  “That was my suggestion,” June radioed. On the mini-map, Artemis was pulling ahead of the rest of the platoon, extending the visual range of all their sensors. “I don’t want any Pyrrhic victories today.”

  There was a momentary silence on the radio.

  “Fine,” Frank snapped. “It means a victory where you were better off losing. Bah, kids these days. Don’t they teach nothing in those bleeping schools anymore?”

  “I knew that,” Chase replied quickly.

  “Incoming,” June shouted, cutting off Lin just as she opened her mic—probably to join Chase’s protest of non-ignorance.

  TARGET DATA ACQUIRED

  “Looks like we’ve got ourselves a winner,” Chase said.

  The juggernauts that appeared on everyon
e’s heads-up displays were wire frame modern art. Some had limbs missing. Most were scant on armor. The variety in chassis types was only matched by the various states of disrepair of every juggernaut arrayed against them.

  “Mind those temp gauges,” Reggie stressed. “But otherwise, fire at a will.”

  [Goblin[4] - 58% To Hit - Torso: 5/20]

  At long range and against a small, moving target, Reggie was happy squeezing off a shot. Even out at max range, the Goblin exploded when Vortex’s Plasma Launcher connected.

  Across the mini-map, Reggie’s platoon was having a field day. Here and there, one of The Mechromancer’s minions would melt away some armor with a laser or score a lucky hit with a Mass Driver. It was damage, and eventually it would add up, but Reggie’s friends were dishing out far more punishment than they were taking.

  Frank and Lin seemed to be enjoying the chance for some CQC kills. The limping, derelict opponents they faced were slow-moving and maneuvered sluggishly. Juggernauts that could normally have run circles around a Tiger stood their ground to be slaughtered. Lin used her Jump Boost to leap from victim to victim while Frank acted the part of a steamroller.

  “Have I mentioned I hate high-heat planets?” Chase asked. He fired off Beam Cannons one by one to limit the load on his heat sinks. “My jug’s named Diablo; he should be right at home in a bleep landscape like this.”

  Kill by kill, Reggie’s spirits rose. This was the heroic mountain climb to face down a dragon. Freedom, heart and soul, lay in the treasure trove beyond the mighty beast—which in this case was likely a teenager with too much time on his hands and poor social skills.

  Still, Reggie could almost taste the tears of vengeance.

  Everyone was dinged and scratched by the time they reached The Mechromancer’s fortress, carved directly into the mountainside.

  “Bleep-scape aside, I’m starting to like the idea of moving in here once we’ve won,” Chase said. “I’ve kind of always wanted a volcano base.”

  “You know,” Reggie replied, feeling his spirits buoyed by the nearness of ultimate victory. “I can picture you as the volcano-lair super villain type.”

  Frank harrumphed into his mic, causing a burst of static. “Then some Brit in a tux comes by, steals his girl, drinks his vodka, and blows the place up.” Able to fight and yap at the same time, Frank took one of his swords and cleaved open the main gate.

  “Umm,” Chase said. “Reggie…”

  “What?” June asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “Bleep,” Reggie muttered.

  The passage into the fortress wasn’t sized for juggernauts.

  “We’ve gotta finish this mission on foot,” Chase said. “Reggie hates infantry missions.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  The inside of the fortress was unlit except where the floors were split and volcanic heat glowed from below. The environmental suits all had lamps built into the helmets, illuminating a cone in front of each of them.

  Chase took point, over Frank’s objections. In the end, the argument had been settled by which of them had the fewer points of spill-over XP from last level-up to lose. Frank had lost 2,250 XP to 1,300 XP and been forced to take up a rear guard position.

  Reggie’s coil pistol was a toy compared to the armaments of the rest of his platoon. They hemmed him in at the center of the group for protection.

  “Get down,” Chase shouted, his voice blaring inside everyone’s helmet over the built-in radios.

  Plasma rifle fire lanced out as Chase fired at something the rest of them hadn’t seen yet. Frank shoved Reggie to the floor against the wall and shielded Reggie with his body.

  More shots reverberated in the closed quarters. Red bolts of energy zipped past overhead. Frank’s body jerked once, but the tough old bastard continued to shield Reggie from fire.

  “Clear,” Chase announced.

  When they continued their advance, the platoon passed the corpse of some insectile robotic drone. It’s black metal carcass lay in shattered pieces across the stone floor.

  “Still thinking you want to move in?” Lin asked.

  Chase’s head lamp swept all around the walls and ceilings. “Nah. But it has potential. Maybe I’ll renovate and flip it.”

  Twice more they encountered the insect-like sentry drones. Each time, Frank fell on top of Reggie to act as a human shield.

  “You gonna do that every time?” Reggie asked.

  Frank stood tall and lifted his chin—or at least the lower edge of his helmet. “As long as you’re my commanding officer, and as long as you’re in the line of fire with no protection, bleep yeah, I am.”

  Their search ended in a room that was clearly an office of some kind. It had the first proper door they’d come across. Instead of a mere opening in the wall, the steel double-door appeared to be starship-grade, sealing and possibly having an airlock for a human occupant beyond.

  “Everyone be ready,” Reggie warned.

  “No one shoot the guy but Reggie,” Chase added, leveling his plasma rifle at the door at odds with his statement.

  The platoon blasted their way inside, tearing the door from its sliding tracks and throwing sprays of molten metal into the room ahead of their advance.

  The office was empty.

  There was a desk facing the door. Lying atop it, the lone item in the room that wasn’t part of the scant furnishings, was a tablet computer.

  Chase was the first one to reach it. He picked it up. “Oh, for bleep’s sake.”

  “What’s it say?” June asked.

  Chase cleared his throat. “‘We’re sorry, your target is in another fortress.’ We just got Mario Brothers trolled.”

  “That’s old school,” Lin said reverently.

  “It’s utter horse bleep,” Chase countered.

  “It’s June’s turn to find us a target,” Reggie stated. “Let’s get the bleep out of here.”

  [Mission Successful - 9000 XP - 17,500Cr]

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  It was a full day later when June showed up, back from hell-only-knows where, with information on The Mechromancer’s current location.

  “Great, how’d you find him?” Reggie had asked, springing up from the couch when she’d run into the rec room breathless and blurted out the location.

  June paused to catch her breath, a wry grin sneaking into the corner of her lips. “I think the more people I tell, the lower my success rate using the perk in the future.”

  Like so many oddities in the game, Reggie let that one pass without digging in too deeply. The how didn’t matter, so long as the lead panned out.

  Minutes later, they were in transit to a peculiar little planet called Jungstown. The peculiar part was that for a planet with a name and breathable atmosphere, it was listed as deserted. Ownership of the planet had changed hands more times than a mob money laundering corporation.

  The drop ship left them in a desolate stretch of mountains that had been given a powdered sugar dusting of snow. It clung to peaks and cliff faces, but the slopes were all too steep, too jagged for deep accumulation.

  “Standard scouting formation,” Reggie ordered as Vortex, Artemis, Yulong, Diablo, and Gremlin stomped down the drop ship’s ramp and into the wilderness.

  June took point, her Phoenix class’s paint job standing out against the stark white and gray landscape like a beacon flame. “I’m picking up a jamming frequency. Sound check.”

  One by one, the platoon checked in.

  “Frank?” June asked. “You there?”

  “I heard him fine,” Reggie reported.

  “I didn’t,” June radioed back. “Hold on… that would mean we’ve got about 300m of communications range.”

  “Tight quarters,” Reggie replied.

  Frank’s voice came over Reggie’s radio. “What the Sam Hill is going on? Why’m I hearing half a phone conversation? It’s like being back on Ft. Collins, listening to my wife on the phone with one of her girlfriends. Didn’t care for it then; don’t much care
for it now.”

  Reggie tapped the base plate for ASHARI’s holographic projector. The AI assistant popped up with a flicker. “Yes, Warrior King?”

  “Put together a relay. Any platoon transmission I receive, rebroadcast it to the others. Got it?”

  “Of course.”

  “Try again,” Reggie radioed.

  June cleared her throat. “Testing. Testing…”

  “Now I hear her,” Frank confirmed.

  “OK. 300m radio range, but I’ve set up a relay. Anyone within 300m of Vortex is on the party line.”

  “Nice work,” Chase said. “Between your relay and the fact that the outside air is -75°C, I’m set to rock this rock’s rocks off.”

  “How long did you spend thinking that up?” Lin asked.

  The mountains were beautiful. Reggie had taken a trip through the Rockies with his dad years ago, and these peaks were even more majestic. Seemed sacrilegious, in a way, improving on nature’s finest efforts, but the scenery was the scattering of leaves over a tiger trap.

  “Keep sharp,” Reggie warned. “This is our most dangerous foe yet.”

  “We’ve been on, like, four missions together, including this one,” Lin pointed out.

  “Doesn’t make it less true,” Chase replied. “Plus, I ‘tooned with Reggie back in the day.”

  “Heads on a swivel,” Reggie barked. “Someone is expecting intruders or they wouldn’t be jamming signals. And if they know, we’re going to have to cluster tight…”

  “We should spread out,” Frank said. “Use hand signals.”

  June chimed in. “That sounds like something we ought to have worked out ahead of time.”

  “Let’s keep in maximum radio range,” Reggie said. “Lin and June, take the eastern and western sides of the valley 250m ahead of me. Frank, Chase, same thing at the rear.”

  They proceeded along the valley floor, arranged like the pips on a die with the 5 facing up. The formation stretched out, narrowed, and became a loose network of juggernauts connected on radio by ASHARI’s relay.