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

by Morgan Cole

  "Hold on, man, no slaves needed. Let me think about it. Maybe if you're good enough, you can be the pilot. We can't have you wrapping this thing around a mountain or an asteroid or what have you."

  "Whatever I need to do. How do you fly this thing, anyway? There's no joystick, or yoke or whatever."

  "The Union isn't real big on physical controls. There's a skill implant to fly her in the outpost library. I'll show you."

  It took a minute to show Marty where to go in his Interface, but he picked it up quickly. I looked at the list, noticing some entries that hadn't been in the station database. I resolved to come back to it later. My skill implant queue had been empty for a while.

  "I can train all of this? What, I can just learn how to speak Chinese, just like that?"

  "Yeah, it's awesome."

  "That can wait. Piloting: Redemption comes first. Damn, I don't have any Nanite Clusters. This says it will cost one."

  "Brick, can you give Marty access to three hundred Nanite Clusters for whatever upgrades he needs, as well as any materials for those upgrades? Get him a Combat Vision Augment too, or an Engineering one if you prefer that, Marty."

  "I'm all about the kicking ass. Combat, please."

  I rolled my eyes. "Fine. Remember, though, this first bunch is free. Let's call it a signing bonus. You're going to have to work for your pay after this."

  "No doubt! You don't know me that well Jake, but I've got a hell of a work ethic."

  The only part of his work ethic that I had seen so far was the part where he ditched his job at the Sheriff's Department to go on the run with me. I hoped it was better than that.

  "Three hundred Nanite Clusters and a Combat Vision Augment are on the way, Jake. I will place them in the outpost's storage arrays."

  "Great. Remember Marty, if you upgrade your Transcendent Flesh it'll knock you out for a while, so make sure you queue it all up at the same time. Stat upgrades and the Flesh upgrade."

  "Got it," he replied, his eyes not leaving the Interface as he rapidly paged through screens.

  Marty was completely absorbed and didn't even notice when I left the control center in search of something productive to do.

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Found our Lead

  NEARLY TEN HOURS LATER I was deeply concentrating on the design I had spread out in front of me when Brick broke hours of silence. Marty was passed out on a cot nearby, his upgrades in progress.

  "Excuse me, Jake."

  I had been fully in the zone, and I was pretty sure he knew that. I had been working on a knockoff version of my Gazer. We had that limited run blueprint, but it only had one use left. If I busted too many more weapons, we'd be done. Besides, I thought I had some ideas to make it better. The mental thread I was following evaporated as I was knocked out of my flow state.

  "Shit. What, Brick?"

  "I believe I may have found the materials we need to complete the Redemption."

  "Really? Tell me, and patch Metra in for this."

  A moment later, Metra spoke up. "What? I was working."

  "You're always working. Let Brick tell us what he's found."

  "Thank you, Jake."

  "As you know, I have been hacking the planet."

  "Stop it, Brick."

  "I have so far been unable to find anything useful in determining who took the gate materials. I continue to devote a portion of my resources to doing so.

  "However, early in the process I discovered some of Mattias's old activity logs. Your grandfather spent a lot of time compromising computer systems on Earth's Internet. Some of that access is still available. The actual data he found is no longer present, but there is some indication that he found evidence of a Union materials cache here on Earth."

  "Really? Wow. I never pictured Grandpa as a hacker."

  "Mattias was a very resourceful man. Earth's Internet is amazingly insecure. Nearly everything is connected to it, which makes penetrating secure facilities largely a matter of finding where the personnel have gotten lazy."

  "When you say secure facilities, what are you talking about?" I asked.

  "The target facility is officially unaffiliated with any government that I can find. At least, I have been able to find no record of it in the Pentagon or State Department files I have access to. Since it is in the United States, I have not searched other government databases. It is, however, guarded by military hardware and personnel.

  "So a black facility then, nice."

  "What does color have to do with anything?" Metra asked.

  "I'll tell you later. Go on, Brick. What did you find?"

  "I compromised a music streaming service, gaining root access to their servers. Factually speaking, I compromised all of the music streaming services. However, only one has been fruitful so far. I then put an updated version of each of their apps into production. This app was designed to use security flaws in the base hardware or software to gain root access to the hosting device."

  Music streaming was how pretty much everyone listened to music. That was millions of devices Brick had compromised. I was impressed.

  "With full access to the device it was trivial to monitor both cameras and microphones to find any mention of our areas of interest. I was searching for a variety of keywords and phrases. Most are related to aliens, advanced material science, or nanotechnology."

  "Brick, I know you've got a lot of capacity but even for you that doesn't sound trivial. That's what, a couple hundred million devices to monitor?"

  "Nine hundred and eight million, seven hundred and fifty-four thousand, two hundred and ten. Remember that it was all of the music streaming services, and most subscribers have multiple devices."

  "I'm calling shit on you, Brick," Metra said.

  "Calling bullshit, Metra," I corrected.

  "Whatever. That's not possible with your hardware, Brick."

  "You are correct. I am unable to do the initial three stages of data filtration in real time without outside help. For that, I compromised cloud service providers and used their excess capacity."

  "Which ones?" I asked, curious.

  "All of them. The processing demands were quite intense."

  "Right, so basically we're looking at thousands of years of prison if anyone ever finds out. How about you stop with the suspense and tell us what you found, Brick?"

  "Shortly. There were many promising recordings, but one in particular stood out. It is from a dedicated music device in a private office. That device was connected to a 4G Internet connection, in violation of the site's security policy. I believe it was due to the user requiring his 'tunes' at the office. I will play you the conversation now."

  A bit of background noise could be heard as the recording started playing. I could just pick out the faintest hint of music, but after whatever filtering had been done it was almost completely gone.

  "LT, can I ask you a question?" a deep male voice asked, the trace of a southern accent audible.

  "You can ask, Sergeant, but I can't guarantee I'll answer," another voice replied, a light tenor with a more neutral and refined tone.

  "All that crap in the hangar, is it really alien? It looks like a bunch of scrap metal and old garbage."

  "Weren't you briefed on this? We don't talk about that stuff."

  "Yeah, LT, sure. But that's just off base. Who else can I talk about this with if not you?"

  "You shouldn't even be talking to me about it. I don't know much more than you do, anyway. The old man told me that back when the scientists were still interested in that junk, they couldn't ever do anything with it. They couldn't cut it, they couldn't bend it, they couldn't drill into it. Not with the fanciest, highest-tech crap they had."

  "I heard that they pulled all that stuff out of an archeological site. Did you ever see that show Ancient Aliens?"

  The recording stopped.

  "After that, their conversation degenerated into discussing a television show about alien life visiting Earth thousands of years ago. While that scenario is cer
tainly plausible, it is outside of my scope."

  "Wait, hold on. How do we know that stuff they're talking about is what we need, Brick?"

  "There is no way to be one hundred percent certain until one of you or a properly equipped drone can inspect the materials, but the description is promising. A material that US government scientists were unable to cut, bend, or drill into with all of their resources? That sounds very much like a tier 2 or 3 metal."

  I had to agree, it did. The alternative was ancient aliens had left it behind in the pyramids or something.

  "We'll be gambling that they have something we can use in that hangar, but maybe it's worth a look. Do you know where it is? You just have a device on 4G."

  "After taking control of the surrounding mobile phone towers as well as several surveillance satellites, I was able to pinpoint the location of the device. It is here."

  A window popped up with a map of North America on it, focused on the southwest. A pin appeared in Nevada.

  "The Nevada desert? Area 51?" I asked. It would be pretty cool to see what was in there.

  "Area 51 was one of the first places I investigated. I believe it is no longer housing anything of interest, if it ever did. This facility is less than one hundred miles away from Area 51, and as you can see, it is very well guarded."

  More images popped up in rapid succession, both satellite pictures as well as other pictures taken quite low to the ground, near the roadway.

  "What are these pics from?" I asked.

  "Self-driving cars are connected to the Internet and have many useful sensors and cameras. Several of the base personnel own these cars."

  I shook my head, awed at just how powerful Brick was once connected to the Internet.

  What I was looking at in the many pictures was what was clearly a military base. Three rows of high fences topped with razorwire. Guards in uniform patrolling with dogs. Watchtowers with riflemen alert and on watch.

  Where the cars parked was pretty far back from the fence, near a collection of single-story concrete buildings. Everything was dusty and brown. The whole base looked like it had been thrown up during the cold war and not renovated since. There was no sign of the hangar the two soldiers were talking about, but many of the buildings on the satellite photos were nowhere near the parking lots.

  "That definitely looks promising. How are we going to get in there without having to kill a bunch of soldiers, though?" I asked.

  "Did I hear Area 51?" Marty said, sitting up.

  I managed to stop Brick from repeating his story. I gave Marty the very short version and showed him the same pics.

  "I knew it!" Marty said. "I knew they were hiding alien artifacts. Maybe there are even some actual aliens in there."

  "This place doesn't look like it's where you'd hide the aliens, Marty."

  "You don't know, man. I've read that these bases are mostly underground. Hundreds of levels deep, sometimes. Look at Cheyenne Mountain. That's just a base we know about! How'd you get access to all those computers so easily, Brick?" Marty asked.

  "There are what appears to be government backdoors in most consumer hardware, to allow the intelligence services access. That made things much simpler."

  "I fucking knew it! They're spying on us all the time!" Marty yelled.

  "We've got to scout that base and see if we can confirm that those materials are even there."

  "Yeah! We can take the Redemption on her first flight and check it out!" Marty said.

  I shook my head. "Actually, no. She's not up to it. No weapons, no shields, and no stealth. It'd be too risky."

  Marty just grinned like a kid with a secret he can't bear to keep any longer.

  "What?" I asked.

  "I was convinced to change the design for my hauler slightly to free up enough exotics to complete the stealth systems on the Redemption," Metra said. "While this change means a measurable decrease in performance, I felt getting Redemption functional enough to be usable was worth the sacrifice."

  "Isn't she the best?" Marty enthused.

  "Yeah," I agreed. "So is she ready to go now?"

  "Not yet. It will take some time to free up the materials from components that were already manufactured and installed. A day or so. Once that's done the hangar can install the stealth system and Redemption will be stealthy with enough flight capability to get you anywhere you like on Dirt."

  "Earth, Metra," I said reflexively. I knew she was doing it just to bug me, but I couldn't help myself.

  "And I can fly her! I've got the skill implanted and everything," Marty said.

  I didn't see any reason not to let him. After all, it wasn't like I was a skilled or naturally talented pilot.

  "Fine. We'll need some things first.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Scouting the Base

  THE SOLID ROOF OF THE hangar overtop of us opened smoothly, exposing the night sky. There were a few wispy clouds, but there was absolutely zero light pollution that far north. We could see the Milky Way in all its glory, and a few traces of the northern lights. It was breathtaking.

  Marty and I were sitting in the cockpit of the Redemption. The Interface had made the entire ship invisible around me. It seemed like I was sitting on empty air inside the hangar, rather than in the second seat of the little spaceship. With a thought, I brought up the Redemption's status sheet.

  ╠═╦╬╧╪

  Redemption

  Hull Integrity: Nominal

  Weapons

  None

  Defense Systems

  None

  Other Systems

  Mitrasa Deluxe Scoutship Stealth Package

  Energy

  Internal Generation: 200 PU/s

  Internal Storage: 10000/10000 PU

  Energy Consumption:

  Propulsion: 0/50 PU/s

  Other: 0/25 PU/s

  ╠═╦╬╧╪

  "I'm going to take her up now," Marty said, sounding a bit nervous.

  It had taken a couple of days to get ready for this trip, and Marty had been practicing on an Interface-provided simulator since then. I was pretty sure we'd be fine.

  We'd opened the gate and I'd spent some time designing new drones for this scouting trip. They needed to be basically invisible, completely silent, and able to interface with Earth tech. That last part had been the toughest but I'd gotten it done. I was calling them infiltration drones and a rack of ten of them sat behind us in the small cargo space, ready to go.

  Marty had spent his time either on the simulator or hanging out with Metra. He seemed almost a different person now. He'd filled out, gaining a lot of muscle on his lanky frame. He was more confident and assured, a changed man compared to the thin, pasty nerd I'd met in Farnell's jail.

  I wondered what I would look like to someone who knew me from before. Would Meredith even recognize me?

  It had been a while since I'd thought about her. Our lives rarely overlapped. We weren't the kind of siblings that were close after we grew up. We weren't even close when we were kids. Mentally, I pushed "contacting my sister” back on the to-do pile. I didn't have time for that, and she'd just try to put her fingers in and exert control.

  I realized Marty was waiting for me to respond. He was the pilot, but I was the captain. I had to live up to that.

  "Mr. Farnell—engage."

  Marty grinned widely and the Redemption rose smoothly out of the hangar she had been built in. The outpost's records told us that Grandpa had never had a chance to fly her. This was her maiden flight. We rapidly left the heavily forested ground behind, the ship rising invisibly into the sky.

  We had tested the ship’s stealth package, and it was nearly flawless. When engaged, you could stand fifteen feet away and see nothing. Not even a shimmer in the air. You had to get about three feet away before you could see something was off. You would probably smack your head into the ship before you noticed it. It was similar to the stealth coating on my improved Scout drones, but much more comprehensive. The Redemption would be in
visible to Earth radar, the naked eye, and even most Union-tech sensor systems as long as she contained her emissions. That meant no maintaining our invisibility while we were firing weapons, or taking weapons fire.

  "I can confirm that the Redemption is invisible to radar," Brick said.

  "Thank you, Brick," I replied. I didn't need to ask him how he knew.

  He's probably compromised every computer on the planet by now.

  I couldn't help but wonder if I'd accidentally unleashed a monster. Was this how the galactic war against the AIs had started? Honestly, I wasn't that worried. I was pretty sure Brick was on our side. He was a friend, not a ruthless AI just waiting to go all Skynet on us.

  At least I hope that's true.

  Brick marked our destination for us and with the ease of long practice, Marty sent the Redemption streaking in that direction.

  We flew below the clouds. Not because it was better for any reason, only because we wanted to be able to see the Earth as we flew. Both of us had vision Augments, so even in the dark of night, we could see perfectly fine. Marty avoided flying over major cities and airports, just in case. The ground passed by underneath us as we flew.

  "I'd never actually flown before, not even as a passenger," Marty said. "I didn’t have any reason to fly in real life. I've flown all sorts of vehicles in video games. Planes, helicopters, spaceships, you name it."

  "Shit, man, this is a hell of a way to pop your cherry."

  Marty only nodded, not taking his eyes off the Earth below us. I had to admit it was pretty hypnotizing. If I hadn't spent that time flying around like a superhero on Hephaseta, I was sure I would have been more consumed with the experience. As it was, I was just worrying about the upcoming mission.

  It felt really strange to be thinking about a mission. I wasn't a soldier. Not that long before I'd been a cubicle monkey working with software.

  Now I'm going to scout a military base before we raid it.

  The raid was the part that was worrying me. Do you know how many non-lethal weapons are in the Union catalog, that work on humans? Zero. Not a single one. No phaser beams that I could set on stun. Nothing. The Union wasn't big on non-lethality. You never needed to stun Ferals. If you did need to, you could probably be a lot less gentle than you would need to be on a human.