Redemption : A LitRPG Space Adventure (The Last Enclave Book 2)

by Morgan Cole

  "Most of the Union only acquired gates and faster than light travel after we joined the Ahrimani in their fight and switched over to Union tech," Regar said.

  "Alright, then what's the First?" I asked.

  "It's nothing," Regar said, waving his hand dismissively. "An honorific. It simply means that my brother Seekers respect me."

  I caught Metra's expression changing as Regar said that, but she didn't open her mouth to contradict him.

  "And life debt?"

  "That is simple enough. Without you my life would have ended on the Spike. It's unlikely I would have made it to the top, or even managed to escape. I will do my best to repay that debt. Anything you need, ask it of me. If I can, I will do it."

  Regar's arm was nearly completely regrown now, and he flexed it.

  "That feels better. It's always awkward to lose a limb," Regar said.

  I could only agree. A Cutter Drone had chopped off my arm not that long ago. I had reattached mine, rather than grow a new one like Regar had.

  "First, now that your arm has regrown, can we revive Seeker Kiril?" Metra asked.

  "Yes, of course. He's waited long enough. He'll be pleased to meet a fellow engineer, Metra. I know he's often bored, with only me and Danner—" Regar said, stumbling to a halt.

  "He'll be glad to meet you," he continued after a moment, his voice more somber.

  Regar moved over to the bunk that Kiril's stasis pod was lying on, opening the metal locker at the foot. The locker was full of Nanite Cluster storage containers. I recognized them, as they were the same model as the one that Brick had created for me when I was clearing the station. He pulled one free.

  "One thing that we're not short of here is Nanite Clusters. What we don't have are materials. Kiril will need them. I have to ask you for another favor, Jake. Would you trade with us?"

  "Yeah, no problem. Brick, give Regar whatever he needs to heal Kiril."

  "Of course, Jake," Brick replied. Regar's expression momentarily soured, but he nodded to me.

  "Thank you. Kiril's a good friend and Seeker. Maybe my last brother. It would be hard to lose him."

  I didn't know what to say to that. Part of me wanted to promise that no, of course Kiril wasn't his last brother. What the heck did I know? I didn't even know how many Seekers there were. The whole thing felt pretty awkward. When he'd recorded that message three months ago there had been eight of them. Now there were two left.

  I was struggling for something appropriate to say when Regar saved me from saying something terribly stupid by changing the subject.

  "Your station, have you given it a name?" Regar asked.

  "No, I've just kind of been calling it the station. Why?"

  "All things need names. Naming things is one of our unique powers as sentient beings. Your grandfather did not believe in the power of names. He was a practical man and the star's designation was enough for him. AF-718A is the name a machine would grant, a soulless designation in a database. Please, grant it a name."

  He was putting me on the spot. I wasn't great at naming things at the best of times. A litany of stupid options flitted through my brain before a good one appeared and stuck fast. Regar waited patiently.

  "I think we'll call it Pax. That means peace in an old Earth language."

  "Pax," Regar said, the unfamiliar word sounding strange as he said it. "A fine name."

  The name felt right the more it stuck with me.

  "Listen, Regar, I'd like to stick around and meet Kiril, but I actually have something important to do on Earth. That's my home world."

  "I understand," Regar said. He set the container down on the bed beside Kiril and walked over to me.

  "If you need me, call and I will come," he said, and extended his hand.

  I went to shake his hand, but ended up gripping his forearm instead, while he gripped mine. Old school, but I liked it.

  Minutes later I left the outpost and headed back to Pax to finish my preparations for departure.

  Chapter Six: Return to Paradise Plains

  THE STARGATE SNAPPED shut behind me, the whine of stressed power-delivery machinery fading. Even without any light, I could still see just fine in the darkness. I was in the small gate room my grandfather had built and then hidden in the basement of his modest North Dakota house. The gate machinery was mounted on the wall to my right, with the gate itself directly behind me. Directly in front of me was the hidden door, still closed. The hole I'd bashed through the wall to enter the room led into the rest of the basement.

  Everything was still and quiet, the air cold with only a faint hint of mustiness. It felt strange to be back on Earth after the last few weeks spent fighting for my life on a distant space station and even an alien world.

  Anyway, I didn't have time for lengthy introspection. I needed to get across the border into Canada and find my way to Grandpa's observation post that he had for some reason hidden in the wilds of North Saskatchewan. It had been years since he disappeared, but the message he'd left on the station had been clear—the Connahr field protecting the Sol system from the Ferals was shrinking, and maybe failing. I needed to see if he was right.

  If he was right and it was failing, I had no idea what I'd do. Maybe I could call in the Union to repair it and I could just leave saving the world to someone else. That'd be nice.

  The hidden door my grandfather installed opened easily, revealing the rest of the basement. I had been halfway through my drunken demolition project, and it showed. Some of the framed walls had been taken down, but many more were just mostly bashed in. More an expression of rage than a proper demolition, really.

  I picked my way across the littered floor to the shelf where I'd left my phone plugged into the ghetto blaster, weeks ago. It was completely dead, of course. The house itself still had electricity, but I hadn't plugged in the phone. I shoved it in one of the pockets of my new parka. I'd have to deal with it later.

  Clunking as I walked, I moved to the stairs. I put my foot on the first stair and paused. Excalibur swayed from my belt on my right, and it reminded me just how much weight I was carrying. I’d also brought back three bags from Pax, all heavy. It was probably far too much for these old wooden steps to support.

  I stepped back and unhitched Excalibur and the bags one at a time. First, I dropped the duffel bag full of gold with a deep clunk. Then the bag full of tier 2 and 3 materials. It contained a mix of all four types—metals, organics, radioactives, and exotics.

  The third bag I left where it was. That one held my Earth guns, all the ammunition, and my Union-standard repair and fabrication tools. Guns were always useful, and I had no idea what I was going to find at Grandpa's outpost. I didn't think there would be Ferals, but I might need to fix the outpost like I had the station. It didn't weigh that much, anyway. Plus, it had my container of Nanite Clusters. It wasn't leaving my sight if I could help it.

  The stairs groaned alarmingly but held underneath me as I ascended out of the basement. Dim blue pre-dawn light filled the first floor of the house, showing me the covered shapes of Grandpa's furniture in the living room. All of the tools were still where I and my father had left them, crowding out the furnishings.

  First things first. There was a pile of junk mail on the floor near the front door, pushed through the mail slot. I sifted through it and found what I was looking for—the fat black and silver key to my Civic hatchback. Out in my driveway I could see a tall snowdrift, vaguely in the shape of my car. I had some work to do before I was going anywhere. I reattached the Civic's key to my Link with the rest of my keys.

  I opened the front door and kicked my way through the knee-deep snow to my car, the pristine whiteness crunching and squeaking underfoot. A lot of snow had fallen while I was gone.

  The doors unlocked when I hit the button and with some effort I found the passenger door handle. The snow brush was where I had left it, in the footwell behind the passenger seat. I dug it out and got to work brushing off the car.

  It didn't take
long before the GN-75 and the bag full of guns and tools hanging off me became seriously annoying. They were bumping into my arms and just generally getting in the way. The needler got stuffed into the bag with the rest of the guns before I dropped it in the snow near the front of the car.

  I was just about done cleaning the snow off the hood and windshield when I heard tires crunching on the empty street. I looked up to see a police cruiser slowly driving by. The man behind the wheel was familiar to me, and I could see confusion and recognition in his face as we made eye contact. The cruiser pulled into the driveway behind my Civic and the cherries on top lit up. Shit.

  I thought about the guns in the bag at my feet. I could definitely get to the GN-75, and I was sure it could turn a police cruiser into swiss cheese, not to mention the middle-aged man driving it. I didn't move—there was no way this encounter was going to end in me killing Farnell, one of the few people in this town that had been genuinely kind to me.

  Sheriff Farnell kept his eyes on me as he spoke into the radio handset on his shoulder. A moment later he opened his door and stepped out, maintaining eye contact.

  "Sheriff," I said, in way of greeting.

  "Hello, there. Can I ask what you're doing with that car, son?"

  "It's my car, Sheriff. Don't you remember, you had one of your deputies drive it back here?"

  Farnell's eyes narrowed. "Son, I know the owner of that vehicle and you... are not him. I admit there's some resemblance, but Jake Monde is a lot smaller than you."

  How had I forgotten about that? Of course he didn't think it was me. I went from an average-sized guy with an average build to a pretty tall guy built like Arnie in his Mr. Olympia days.

  "Ah, right. Sheriff, it's a long story. I don't really have the time right now to fill you in. I'm sorry. I've got to get going."

  "Young man, you're not going anywhere until I'm satisfied," Farnell said, and then stepped out from behind the cruiser door. His right hand rested gently on the butt of his holstered revolver.

  Back on the station I'd become—literally—superhuman. I knew that I could cross the space between us before he could clear his holster. I could disarm him, knock him out, even kill him. Hell, I could let him shoot me, and unless he got me in one of my eyes I'd be fine. One of my Augments was subdermal armor, and it would stop even a high-velocity rifle round.

  I dismissed all of those options immediately. Things weren't desperate yet, and there was no way I wanted to hurt a good man just trying to do his job.

  "Let me see some ID. Keep your hands in sight, move slowly. Place it on the hood here and step back," Farnell instructed, indicating the hood of the police cruiser in front of him.

  I set the brush down on the mostly clean Civic's hood and stepped to my left. With a subtle movement of my right leg I kicked the bag full of guns underneath the front of the car. I didn't dare look down but I was pretty sure I'd gotten it all the way underneath the car.

  Keeping my hands in sight I walked slowly toward Farnell as I fished out my wallet, a battered brown leather piece I'd had for nearly a decade. I laid my driver's license on the cruiser's warm hood in front of Farnell and stepped back.

  Farnell picked the license up and gave it a quick look, frowning as he read it. He pushed the card into his breast pocket and drew his revolver. The gun was bright chrome, a serious, chunky-looking piece with a large, black muzzle at the end of a four-inch barrel. I had no idea what caliber it was, but the idea of getting shot with it wasn't appealing, subdermal armor or not.

  "Turn around and place your hands behind your head. I am taking you into custody until I can work out what's going on here."

  "Sheriff, come on. It's me, Jake. We sat in your car and talked, a couple of weeks back. You gave me a ride home."

  "You expect me to believe you grew a foot and put on sixty pounds of muscle in two weeks? Pull the other one, son. Turn around."

  I sighed, turning around and gripping the back of my head with my hands. The bag with the guns in it was at the front of the car, mostly buried under snow. I didn't think he would notice it. Grandpa's house had no neighbors, so with luck I could leave it here a short while and everything would be fine.

  There was a jingle of metal behind me and I felt cold metal close around my left wrist. Farnell moved my hands behind my back and cuffed me efficiently.

  "Is there anyone else in the house? Do you know where Jake is?" Farnell asked.

  "I told you, Sheriff. I'm Jake," I replied.

  The sheriff frisked me, taking my Link with the keys dangling off it, my wallet, and my dead phone. That was all I had on me.

  He steered me toward his cruiser. I didn't resist, as I was fairly certain I could break the cuffs without much effort if I needed to. He opened the rear passenger door and pushed my head down as he deposited me in the back. The door clunked closed and I was left watching him return to the house through the steel mesh separating the front and back seats.

  The front door was unlocked and he disappeared inside. He was gone for a few minutes. I could only hope he wouldn't look through the bags I'd dropped on the basement floor. It'd be hard to explain nearly one hundred pounds of gold in unmarked bars.

  The inside of the police car was warm, and smelled vaguely of old coffee and the faint whiff of bleach. The radio crackled as the few other members of the tiny Paradise Plains sheriff's department talked to each other, their voices barely understandable through the low-quality speakers.

  When he returned, Farnell closed the front door of the house firmly behind him and stepped carefully through the knee-deep snow. I was relieved to see that he had completely failed to notice the bag buried under snow at the front of my Civic. Maybe it'll be okay there for a while.

  "At the station we'll run your prints. If you want to tell me who you are and where Jake Monde is before that comes back, things might go easier for you."

  I honestly wasn't a hundred percent sure that my fingerprints were even the same after my transformation. My hands were bigger, would the pattern still match? I knew the government had my prints on file, somewhere. At the very least from a border crossing into Canada, or my trip to France in the last year of high school.

  I resigned myself to slipping away at my first opportunity. It's a small town sheriff station. How hard could it be to break out of?

  Chapter Seven: I am Being Detained

  AS IT TURNED OUT, IT was harder than you'd think. Farnell radioed ahead, telling them he was coming in with a suspect and to get a cell ready. Faster than I expected, there was the clunk of the solid, barred door closing and locking behind me.

  "Back up to the bars and stick your hands out, I'll uncuff you," Farnell said.

  The cuffs released and I got my hands back. I turned to face Farnell, who was studying me.

  "Marty will take your prints and run them. Before he does that you can come clean with me and tell me who you are. It's really uncanny how much you look like Jake. You're definitely a relative. Why don't you just be straight with me? Tell me what's happened."

  I trusted Farnell. He'd been nothing but kind to me. Even now, he was trying to do right by me. He'd seen some random stranger screwing around with my car and claiming to be me, and had arrested him. Well, detained him—me anyway. Something clicked and I decided to just be straight with him. Worst case scenario I could just break out and try not to hurt anyone.

  Farnell was waiting for me to speak. I opened my mouth to do so and was interrupted.

  "Sheriff, can you come in here a minute? Minuteman Ranch again," a female voice called from the other room.

  "Oh for Pete's sake. Hold on, son. I'll be back," he said, turning and hurrying out of the holding area.

  I heard a conversation start, Farnell and one or two others talking, but couldn't make out the words. After a few minutes passed I realized I might be waiting a while.

  The cell I was in was pretty small, roughly fifteen feet square with a concrete floor and two cots. There was another with the same layout right n
ext to it, empty. A pair of cameras mounted high on the walls looked down into the cells.

  Idly, I gripped the bars of the cell door and tugged on them. They had absolutely no give to them at all. Let's see just how strong I am.

  I braced my feet and tried to force the door open, a hand on the bars to each side of the opening. The muscles of my arms, chest, and back bulged. The steel cage creaked and groaned as I torqued it, but I could feel that I simply didn't have the strength to force it open. Maybe the locking mechanism would fatigue and snap eventually, but it wasn't going to do it anytime soon. I released my grip with a frustrated sigh.

  "Holy shit, how strong are you?" a voice asked, and I jumped a bit.

  Framed in the doorway to the right was a tall, lanky man. He had dirty-blonde hair down past his shoulders, a receding hairline, and a magnificent Wild Bill Hickock handlebar mustache. Above the stache were curious, watery blue eyes under wire-rim glasses.

  He didn't seem to be one of the deputies. He was wearing jeans and underneath his open parka I could see a black t-shirt with a UFO and the slogan "I want to believe" underneath it. His boots were caked with snow.

  "Ah, yeah. I lift a bit," I replied. "I wanted to see just how strong these doors were."

  "Just a bit? I think you'd need a truck to pull that door off. You made it sound pretty unhappy."

  I shrugged, not sure how to respond to that.

  He stomped a couple times, knocking the snow off his boots before coming into the room and closing the door behind him.

  "What's the sheriff got you in there for anyway?"

  "A bit of mistaken identity."

  Sheriff Farnell ducked back into the room and spotted the newcomer. "Marty, don't bother this man. Take his fingerprints and run them."

  "Yes, sir," Marty replied and with a glance at me left the room. Farnell closed the door behind him, leaving it open a crack.

  Marty returned a few minutes later, having hung up his parka and fetched a fingerprint scanner.