ASHARI popped up from the console. “Sgt. King, I notice that your heart rate is unusually elevated prior to this mission.”
Reggie glanced down at the radio controls to make sure he wasn’t talking with an open mic, but ASHARI was good about overriding the radio controls when she wanted to talk. “Is it?” he asked with a shrug. “Maybe. Nothing to worry about.”
“On the contrary, you’ve been avoiding my advice to relax and find some fun to relieve stress,” ASHARI said. “Had I realized that complex tactical operations would produce a dopamine response, I wouldn’t have to keep suggesting that Lt. Mallet join you in your quarters.”
“That… that’s been your doing?” Reggie shouted, hoping he hadn’t been loud enough to hear from other cockpits. He controlled his voice. “Get off my case, and leave June out of this.”
“Just because you haven’t been suffering flashbacks doesn’t mean your mental state is normal,” ASHARI said. “You’ve been into two bouts of a diagnosable depressive state. To date, your brief encounters with Lt. Mallet have shown the highest degree of recovery.”
“It’s fake,” Reggie said. “Simulated responses to simulated physical contact. Rather get my adrenaline rush fighting.”
“For which I was attempting to congratulate you,” ASHARI said. “You are making headway solving your own—”
Reggie shut off the holograph with a fist thumped on the console button.
“Mind your own business,” he muttered.
0450 hours…
When they’d planned out the mission, June’s arrival time on Carbine Minor had been 0447. She should be on the surface, but there was no built-in mechanism to alert him to the second drop ship’s landing.
“What do we do if they botch this?” Chipz asked.
Radio switched back on, Reggie replied. “We carry on. This isn’t an if/then mission. They have a job to do. So do we. If we have to go out on a limb and trust that they get their shit done, that’s what we do. I have every confidence that June and SwampFox can pull this off.”
0452 hours…
[Wounded Legion Force Engaged on Carbine Minor]
“There we go,” Reggie said. “That’s the signal. Beginning approach to Tullus VI.”
He could envision June and SwampFox taking on a sentry force. Nothing seemed to indicate a larger raid than attempting to quickly and quietly eliminate the sentries along a single approach to a target. With Artemis’s scanners and SwampThing’s new LRM-heavy build, they ought to be taking indirect shots without being spotted in return. For all Liberty Clan knew, the entirety of Wounded Legion was on Carbine Minor.
It would take Reggie and his remaining troops twelve minutes to arrive on Tullus VI. If Napoleon was on the ball, that was right about the time he’d be arriving on Carbine Minor to chase wild geese that June had left behind.
0502 hours…
“June, pull out,” Reggie ordered. Radio silence time was over. If by some miracle Liberty Clan had hackers who could intercept and decrypt Wounded Legion military frequencies, it would only cost them a couple minutes worth of confusion.
“Roger that,” June confirmed. “Already on our way back to the drop ship. No sign that they spotted us yet.”
Reggie cracked his knuckles. His own drop ship was already in the Tullus VI atmosphere, ready to make landfall.
Chapter Forty-Five
[Primary Objective: Force the Surrender of Tullus VI to Wounded Legion]
Reggie was in no mood to set secondary objectives that night.
The drop ship disgorged its occupants. Wounded Legion acted as one. Reggie had forgone platoon assignments for this mission in favor of a single detachment of eight juggernauts. This was among the least defended of Liberty Clan’s civilian worlds, and Reggie planned to bum rush it.
“Harper, Chipz, Monty, fan out and get eyes on the stationary defenses,” Reggie ordered. “Frank, lead the charge.”
There was no point arriving at the battle before Frank got there. He and Lin were the legion’s most dangerous fighters. Any long-range combat along the way would simply be to suppress the defenders’ response to their assault.
Tullus VI was a blue-green marble with limited land mass. If not for that fact, it might have been a population center to rival the core worlds. Instead, it was a beachgoer’s paradise comprised of 95 percent surface water and strings of Philippine-style archipelagos. The drop ship had placed them on an uninhabited island just off the coast of the major population center.
The scouts had already gone into the sea. Now it was Frank’s turn to lead Gremlin into the watery depths.
Waves lapped Vortex’s torso as Reggie waded into the saltwater. There was something ancient and powerful about the ocean, and walking into it with no intention of keeping above the surface had a Cthulhu feel to it.
Except this wasn’t a suicide by drowning or an offering to the Elder Gods. This digital ocean was shallow between islands in the chain. There would never be more than 100 meters of seawater above Reggie and his detachment.
The sea was filled with exotic fish of every variety. The level of detail that Valhalla West put into its designs never ceased to amaze Reggie. None of them looked familiar to him, though he was no marine biologist, but the whole effect was of an undersea ecology that could have been transported directly from an aquarium on Earth.
TARGET DATA ACQUIRED
Reggie scanned the mini-map as soon as Harper broadcast the island’s defenses. “All right. We’ve got artillery at Juliet-eight-niner. Monty, lay down fire to keep the gunners there occupied. There are terrestrially launched aerial fighters based at Kilo-niner-four. Chipz, take out as many as you can before they get any airborne. Harper, you—”
“Already on it,” Harper confirmed without being told. Reggie watched him alter course for the mountain pass where reinforcements would most likely arrive by.
There was room on the far side of the island for a drop ship to land. The island was designed to defend from the other side. The volcanic mountains that split the island unevenly into two regions left one side heavily inhabited (where all the best beaches could be found) while the other was choked with jungle and military installations.
Wounded Legion’s assault by sea was a back door into the heart of Tullus VI’s main city.
Reggie lost sight of Gremlin’s head as it broke the water. They were almost there. The uphill climb brought Vortex ever closer to breaching the surf as well.
When Reggie came up, water cascaded down Vortex’s windshield. Ahead of him, Frank dripped and poured waterfalls down every surface of Gremlin, gleaming like a car getting a driveway wash minus the bucket of suds. To either side of him, Chase and Lin emerged as well, with Spike taking up the rear position in Nails.
Frank stomped across the beach, civilians already having scattered for cover upon seeing the scouts come out of the water in front of them. Gremlin scattered umbrellas and beach blankets. He knocked over a lifeguard station. Stomping for the inland roads, he cut a direct line for the government center, where the quaint waterfront gave way to skyscrapers and municipal edifices.
The rest of them remained in the water.
“Incoming,” Chipz called out.
TARGET DATA ACQUIRED
The aerial fighters had launched, represented by eleven blips on the mini-map.
“Fire at will,” Reggie ordered. Frank lumbered onward while the juggernauts cooled by the washing surf let loose hell on the airborne threat.
Beam Cannons did the hard work. Chase and Reggie picked apart the aircraft before most of them could launch their payloads. A few fired off Beam Cannon-Ss, but those did little to the juggernauts. Plasma Launcher fire wasn’t accurate enough to hit the fast-moving fighters, but Spike’s Chi-Ri was packing missiles requisitioned from the Dundee Proving Ground in the brief window where Wounded Legion had owned it.
The real surprise was Lin in her Dragon. Yulong’s Anti-Matter Projector was like duck hunting with main battle tank. Surprisingly, it
worked. Lin was picking off one fighter per shot—obliterating them, in fact.
“How you pulling that off?” Chase asked.
Lin snorted derisively. “Snipers gonna snipe. Aiming’s for noobs. I’m a headshot machine.”
“Or you’re getting lucky, and Reggie’s Command Radius is enough to let you get away with snap-shooting with that hell cannon of yours,” Chase countered.
TARGET DATA ACQUIRED
“Cavalry’s coming,” Harper announced as the Liberty Clan NPC defensive juggernauts appeared on the mini-map. “I’ve got four Wolverines, three Osprey, two Tigers—”
“And a partridge in a pear tree,” Chase sang.
“One Elephant,” Harper finished.
“We don’t want to fight that Elephant,” Reggie said. “Monty, rendezvous with Frank and get to the capital building. Everyone else, hold off those reinforcements.”
Trudging out of the surf, Reggie had a flash of old war movies set on D-Day. This wasn’t Normandy, but he’d always wondered what it must have been like for those old-timers to charge out of landing craft onto a beachhead. Today wasn’t going to teach him that feeling, because those brave souls hadn’t been armored in a 65-ton juggernaut, nor had they been playing a video game.
Still, the march out of the water gave Reggie chills.
“I’m almost there,” Frank said. “Stomped a couple rolly-tanks, all real world and ineffective. Kinda felt bad about it, actually. But I did the—”
“Get inside,” Reggie ordered. “Monty’s 200 meters out. He’ll catch up with you.”
This whole mission, start to finish, was an exercise in speed and timing. June and SwampFox had done their part. The scouts had managed theirs. Now it was Frank and Monty—the latter pulling double duty—to close it out.
“Got a target lock,” Lin reported, taking up a position behind an apartment building that came to armpit height on Yulong. She aimed her Anti-Matter Projector over the top of it with a line of sight to the mountain pass.
“Harper, fall back,” Reggie radioed. “We’ll see them coming now. Anything not already entering the pass will surrender along with the planet.”
“No pressure or anything,” Monty said cheerfully. Tallyho pulled up alongside Gremlin on the mini-map.
Reggie took cover behind a commercial skyscraper. There were bound to be civilian casualties, but they were just bits of data.
Just bits of data.
Not like Reggie.
Reggie still had a slab of flesh back on meatspace with a human brain in it. These digitized civilians didn’t.
He kept telling himself that as awestruck gawkers lined the windows of the office building beside him, fates resigned and curiosity overwhelming them. They pressed against the glass windows for a better view, seemingly aware that no place was safe and preferring to watch the spectacle in the hopes they might survive to tell the tale.
[Elephant[1] - 85% To Hit]
There was one nice factor to facing a slow-moving massacre machine like an Elephant. They were hard to miss.
Reggie leaned out to fire both Plasma Launchers and both Beam Cannon-Ms mounted on Vortex. All four shots connected with Elephant[1]’s torso.
Elephant[1] Torso: 160/180
It’s not that it was ineffective fire, but Reggie had a long ways to go before he put a real dent in the thing.
But the Elephant pilot had taken note of Vortex.
Two Mass Driver shots came in, and Vortex lost its left arm in an instant. Red damage warnings flared, and Reggie ducked back into cover, taking himself out of the fight.
This wasn’t a kill-all mission. This was a planetary conquest. Liberty Clan didn’t have the Zealot trait, so getting Tullus VI’s civilian government to stand down was going to end hostilities.
From behind his skyscraper, Reggie watched the tactical maps. The Tullus VI defenders were closing in. That damned Elephant wasn’t stopping in the face of continued fire from Yulong, and its four legs were all armored to prevent quick, accurate Anti-Matter Projector shots from disabling it.
“Frank, Monty, report in,” Reggie ordered. He could win a pitched battle—probably—but war wasn’t always about eliminating every last enemy. Sometimes it was about maneuvering them to a lost position where they could see only surrender and destruction ahead of them.
“Bloody maze!” Frank complained. “Designed by madmen!”
“We’re almost there,” Monty said. “They have maps on the walls.”
“Written in pig Latin!”
Reggie watched the scouts play hide-and-seek. He watched the duel between Lin and the oncoming freight train of a super-heavy juggernaut. He watched the pennants flying above the Tullus VI courthouse with their Liberty Clan blue and white star.
[Primary Objective Complete: Force the Surrender of Tullus VI to Wounded Legion]
[Mission Successful - 11,250 XP - 10,000Cr]
The courthouse pennants changed to Wounded Legion khaki.
“Calling back the drop ship now!” Reggie shouted. “Everyone meet up at the park at Golf-seven-seven.”
Shifting Vortex into action, he programmed an auto-pilot course for the meet-up.
Then Reggie made a call.
A holographic face appeared where ASHARI often came to badger him. “Hey, King. Your plan come off?”
The face belonged to GladiatorGabe, leader of The Stone Star State. He was bald and bore a nasty scar that cut across his left eye from forehead to jawline. His faction was in the top five in all the Star League, dwarfing the Liberty Clan as much as they dwarfed Wounded Legion.
“Yup,” Reggie said. “Tullus VI is Wounded Legion property. Mostly intact too.” He punched in a command and relayed an up-to-the-minute tactical status to GladiatorGabe.
The holographic face looked off camera for a moment. “All right. I’ll give you a half mil for it.”
“Deal,” Reggie said without hesitation. Then he paused. “You know Liberty Clan’s going to be pissed, right?”
[Tullus VI Now Owned by The Stone Star State]
GladiatorGabe smiled. “Let ‘em. I’m already upgrading the defensive net. I’ll have fifty juggernauts on the ground inside the hour. Pleasure doing business, King.”
“What’s going on?” Chase asked.
“The surprise part of my plan,” Reggie said, switching frequencies. “We all knew coming in that we couldn’t hold this place. I just snagged us 500,000Cr for our war efforts and gave it over to someone who could.”
Chase hooted laughter.
“I don’t get it,” Chipz said. “We could’ve run merc jobs if we just wanted money.”
Reggie arrived at the rendezvous. “We took a planet from Liberty Clan and gave it to someone who they can’t take it back from. The money’s just a bonus. We can’t win an outright war with these clowns, but we’re going to make them pay.”
Chapter Forty-Six
June and SwampFox were already back at the Green Zone waiting when Reggie arrived with the rest of Wounded Legion. They’d purchased champagne from the in-game store and showered the conquering—and reselling—heroes with sudsy bubbly as soon as they climbed down from their juggernauts.
SwampFox met Reggie with a bro hug, clapping him on the back. “Man, that was great! I fired off about a dozen volleys of LRMs. I bet those Liberty Clan NPCs thought I was six guys. Felt naked not packing any other weaponry, but it didn’t matter. I ran like hell when they started searching.”
June came up and hugged Reggie as well. “The mission survival bonus was a sweet gesture too.”
“I just wanted to make sure you both knew it wasn’t a suicide mission,” Reggie said. “Glad I wasn’t wrong.”
Most of the legion had to go to work soon, but for the time they had, they partied. It was times like this that Reggie wished there were more than just the ten of them left. Ten was small for a bash-type party, and no amount of cranking up the volume on the music could change that.
Still, it felt good. Reggie’s soul had been pol
ished clean and given a fresh coat of wax. He felt like a new man.
As the party wound down and players started having to log out, Reggie pulled June aside. “I spoke to ASHARI,” he said to her. “She said I was doing a lot better.”
“Oh,” June said. “Glad you’ve replaced Dr. Zimmerman with an AI lapdog.”
“No. It’s not like that,” Reggie protested. After all, Zimmerman and his Valhalla West buddies are the ones who customized ASHARI for him. “I just mean, you two don’t need to worry about keeping my morale up.”
“Oh?” June said with a raised eyebrow. “What’s she been doing for you?”
Reggie couldn’t tell if June was jealous or just giving him a hard time. “Forget it. Forget I said anything. Great work out there tonight, but I think I’m going to get some shuteye.”
Chapter Forty-Seven
Reggie’s shuriken flew wide of the mark, sticking point-first into a wooden support beam. The target of his assassination, a portly merchant with a thin, twisted mustache, had been blissfully unaware of his impending death.
[Bonus FAIL!: Target Aware of Shinobi]
The word fail appeared in bloody letters even as a system message.
Nama Hideo’s bodyguards sprang from their seats and shielded their master’s body even as they drew swords to meet his attacker.
“Noob,” Chase said from beside him, using the Night’s Whisper ability to speak without being heard by anyone but Reggie.
Before Reggie could botch things up any worse, Chase flung two throwing stars of his own. Through the [Falling Sword Throw] ability, each expanded mid-flight and decapitated a swordsman. The two bodyguards gushed blood from their necks and toppled over.
[Bonus!: Twin Kill]
Reggie looked in jealousy at Chase’s top-level gear and wondered if he’d ever play enough Silent Shuriken to earn that junk. Pushing aside thoughts of the future, he drew his sword and charged in.
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