The Duty (Play to Live: Book # 3) (10 page)

Snowie had been the object of the mercs' special attention: the tank barrel in his hands and the design of his armor lit up many eyes with confusion and secret envy. I noticed some soldiers mouth something as they used their fingers to measure the size of their six-packs, mentally trying a tank track on for size. A new fad was taking over the Russian cluster.

The reporter that accompanied us was a ranger which was only logical as both professions live on their feet. But while I observed him circling our group in wide loops as we proceeded, I couldn't help thinking he must have been doing a bit on the side, maybe mapping out the area for the rangers' guild. Still, formally I had nothing to go on: he could have been looking for good screenshot angles for all I knew. I still had to cough up a couple of guards to cover him though: sooner or later he was bound to walk into something unfriendly, bring it back to the group and slow down the raid by some inevitable scrapping followed by ICU procedures. Which was nothing to sniff at, considering that one minute of downtime cost me nearly two hundred gold. Yeah, right, so I'd counted. And no, it didn't make me a cheapskate. I just needed to have my budget under control in order to be able to set the right kind of tasks. Like, for instance, I'd just received the message from our point men: they'd discovered a pack of rather rare desert wolves and were waiting for my orders. Widowmaker cast me an expectant look: the question was outside of his jurisdiction. I had to make my own decision.

The easiest thing to do was to growl, "No distractions from the initial objective!" But the route was long and boring and the men's brains needed some exercise, especially if it paid in gold thus diminishing the hire costs. So I had to open Wiki and indulge in some strategic planning. In order to catch one wolf, you needed three soldiers of the same level. Add 20% if the beasts came as part of a pack as those creatures had excellent communication systems in place, complicating the farming process no end. The pack we'd discovered had six wolves which meant we needed about twenty soldiers. Did we have a fast-moving group like that, capable of leaving the ranks for half an hour, then catching up with us? We did. Excellent. One wolf's average loot was about twenty copper plus a 0.5% chance of a jackpot in the shape of a rare item worth one to five grand. Peanuts, I know, but in order to get them, all you needed to do was bend down and pick them off the ground. In another thousand paces, another stop to pick up more money. And again. And what's that over there?—a silver ruble! And that?—a tenner gold!

Thus our raid group snaked amid the low hills that melted into dunes, constantly letting out the tentacles of farm teams. By the time the night halt came, our treasurer was lugging around nearly six thousand gold and about a dozen rather curious items. It didn't pay for the raid, no way—what it did do was make it a bit cheaper, much more entertaining and considerably more interesting. Anglers know the feeling.

We stopped for the night openly and defiantly, right on a sloping dune ridge. Bonfires blazed in the night, sending a clear message of our strength and authority to whoever was concerned. But even though we set up plenty of tents, enough to house all three hundred raid members, there were barely forty of us left for the night. The rest had used their right to an eight-hour sleep and logged out.

Somewhere in snowed-in Moscow or Vologda, magnet clamps clicked, releasing the glass lid of a sarcophagus-like capsule letting out the tired player. Recognizing familiar sounds, a dog raised his head and vigorously wagged his tail. The patter of a child's footsteps was drowned out by a girl's happy voice, "Mom, Dad's back from work!"

The wife suppressed a smile as she watched her husband stagger to the fridge and gulp some cold milk straight out of the carton. "Everything all right?"

He lowered his eyes in affirmation as he drank; finally he weaned himself off the carton and caught a breath, tousling the little girl's hair. "Everything's fine, sweetie pie. Just another day at the office."

I heaved a sigh. The mental picture triggered by the avalanche of logout reports was just a tad too sad.

The fleeting blues didn't last, though. I had a great team around me, some very interesting people, and none of them were in a hurry to hit the sack: permas didn't have the same sleep needs as human players who were stuck in their bodies aged by life itself.

So there we sat trading war stories, joking and spinning yarns, not forgetting the ladies present. The nearby hills trembled with the guffawing of a dozen hefty throats, prompting the occasional distant glint of eyes to disappear warily in the dark. I leaned back against Bagheera's warm side while listening to the conversation, drinking some strong coffee and flicking cigarette ash into the flames. I had this heady feeling—a sudden premonition that everything was going to be all right, after all; that even in a thousand years' time I'd be able to sit like I was sitting now by a campfire at night, knowing I could rely on myself and my men.

A dry twig crunched—a broken limb of one of those sun-dried creeping brambles that clung to the dunes for dear life with their countless thorns as we'd ridden past. The soldiers swung round to the sound as I squinted, peering into the dark. The radar blinked, outlining a target not five paces away. An outpost guard darted to intercept it even though I could see he wouldn't make it.

"I've found you... I've made it..."

A girl staggering with exhaustion, her life bar hovering at the miserable 1%, made a few uneven steps before collapsing to her knees by the fire. "Guys, I need your help. We need to get Alexis out..."

We fed her our best morsels, comforting and commiserating as our fists clenched white at her tearful story—the dreadful story of a slave girl. Me, I couldn't help thinking that her situation wasn't some sick exception from the rule: this could quite possibly be one of AlterWorld's development trends. This was our potential future: the future that was already taking shape in some private locations and even clusters. We knew ruefully little about the situation outside our borders: players everywhere didn't give a damn about international politics which often boiled down to some sick flashmob idea in the vein of, "How about porting over to genocide a few Yanks?"

Oksana ended her story with an embarrassed sniffle. She brushed a tear from her cheek and looked around at us, hopeful. "Guys, you think you could help?"

I peered into the faces of the mercs sitting around the fire. Pursed lips, gritted teeth, eyes squinted in silent fury. I had a funny feeling that if I said
no
to the poor prisoner, the entire group would terminate their contracts, fling their cancellation charges in my face and rush off to administer justice. Their determination didn't upset me. I was in total agreement with them on that one: we couldn't let an evil of this caliber go unpunished.

I nodded. "We can and we will."

Lots of things had contributed to that decision: the girl's tears, her frantic call to arms and the sacred duty of the strong to stand up for the weak. But basically, it was my absolute rejection of this new reality that a lot of people seemed to be bent on building around them. Slavery, violence, the helplessness of some vs. the all-pervading permissiveness of others. That sounded like a universal formula for today's society, dammit! Just look around you and you'll see that all those closest to you have already suffered in the clutches of that crazy equation.

Taali and her sister, ground to pulp by the grindstone of the so-called legal system. Lena who'd lost her identity during the Cats' brain kill session; her parents, shown to the door by both the police and city authorities; Cryl who'd gone through his own personal hell... all of them but grains of sand in the system's gear wheels.

A society of equals was but a pipe dream, of course. But the society of the rightless was a looming threat. I didn't think I knew the solution to it, my mind apparently too weak to advise. But I had another advisor: my conscience. I had to take justice into my own hands. I had to do what my heart told me to. Not obeying some superior's command or a phone call from a self-indulgent authority, nor accepting the offer of a bribe or worrying that "this wasn't the way to do these things"—no, I had to do this based on my own idea of justice.

"How many people in the castle?" I asked Oksana who sat there casting a cautiously hopeful stare at my men, still disbelieving that this horde of burly males and soldierlike females could drop their own agendas at a minute's notice in order to rush to her help, saving her friends and punishing their torturers.

It was about to happen, she'd better believe it. This was the right way to do these things. People of our cluster don't leave their own behind in a battle.

She wrinkled her funny little nose and began mouthing calculations. "Not many!" she finally said. "The castle is tiny. Nine hundred men, a thousand max. Only," she studied the mercs, "there're not so many of you, are there? How are you going to-"

Her eyelashes quivered as she bit a desperate lip. In the silence that followed I could hear one of the sergeants chuckle. Another voice spoke, remembering an old Russian joke,

"The Chinese were leaking across the border in small groups of a hundred thousand each."

The girl hurried, wringing her fingers, desperate not to lose hope, "I mean a thousand in total. That's what the cooks in the kitchen say. Only few of them soldiers. These Chinese gangsters don't allow many into their elite. Their castle is more like an underground sweatshop outside of the cluster's boundaries, as well as the rangers' and hunters' station. Three hundred crafters sit in the cellar and never see the light of day. The farm teams are all sent out to dungeons in the morning. Then there's the staff: a lot of them, in fact, as all those get-rich-quick bastards demand a lot of attention: complex rituals, grooming, all that. Every warrior has his personal slave, a girl normally. The total number of soldiers has to be about two hundred, plus slave drivers and commanders of all levels, not to mention other big wigs."

I nodded. "Slow down, girl. We aren't taking our words back. We can even find some extra force if needed. But what you've just said makes us hope we can manage on our own. What do you think, Widowmaker? Isn't your name Alexis too? Shall we all go and sort out the bad guys? Want us to save your namesake?"

His fingers fiddled with a cigarette. Then he flicked it into the fire, watching the sparkling tracer arc through the air. "We'll manage," he nodded. "Not now, of course. In the morning when the others are back. Think you could spare a Dome Shield Removal scroll?"

Even without checking the cooldown timer I knew that the skill was already activated: the field conditions didn't allow me to transfer the spell to a scroll. "I might."

Widowmaker flashed a promising smile. "That's it, then! Shame we can't storm the castle at night. The others won't be back before o-eight hundred."

"It's probably for the better," Oksana offered. "By eight o'clock, there're not so many people left in the castle. The gangsters get up early and leave on whatever business they have. The slaves are sent out to the dungeons at five..."

I hummed my understanding. Sure we were the toughest thing since mithril jockstraps, and still it felt a bit iffy storming a thousand-strong castle. We had to make sure we didn't botch it. Hundreds of lives were at stake.

I turned back to the girl who was desperately fighting off fatigue. "You know how to forward maps? I'll explain it to you in a minute. I need all your locations, all the places where you've ever been to: dungeons, castles, transit bases. Compress it and email it all to me. Somebody give her some coffee before she drops face down into the fire."

"Can I have a copy, too?" Widowmaker asked, his voice unsure.

I cast him a long look. He knew of course his request was out of his brief. The information of new unknown locations and hidden farm zones cost a lot—enough for an inquisitive mind to eek a decent profit out of it.

And still, I couldn't hope to plan a half-decent op without his experience. Besides, I just didn't want to hurt his feelings with any mistrust. Widowmaker was my brother in arms—and a potential ally. "Sure."

So began the drudgery of staff work. Oksana was showered with questions as we worked out the castle layout, the types of characters engaged, the teams' alarm response actions, the slaves' bind points and their respective degrees of loyalty to mention but a few. Two hours later, the stealth group escorting our wizard disappeared into the night. They had to divert sixty miles off the planned route in order to set up a portal beacon as close to the castle walls as possible. That way we could save a whole lot of time, attacking the enemy first thing in the morning without the additional hassle of a hike across the desert.

Bagheera purred, protracting his claws in anticipation of a good scuffle. Our dedicated reporter was beaming with enthusiasm as he tapped away on his virtual keyboard—apparently inspired by the prospect of a sensational exclusive. I had to make sure he didn't leak any unnecessary strategic or personal information like names, coordinates or tactical groundwork.

It was four in the morning. Oksana was already fast asleep, sniffling quietly as she fearlessly cuddled up to Bagheera's warm flanks. The animal cast surprised looks at both of us, as in,
Who's that now, Master? Mind if I growl in her ear?
The troops had already hit the sack too; the sergeants had checked up on the sentry pickets and went to their tents hoping to throw a few Zs before the battle. Time for us to do the same. It promised to be one hell of a day, and a brain is a weapon just like any other, so you had to keep it honed and rested. I announced the end of the planning session that seemed to be dragging out too long and deep, and ordered lights-out.