The Duty (Play to Live: Book # 3) (11 page)

I was awakened by the hum of human crowds, the clangor of steel and a trembling of feline flesh under my head. I prized my eyes open. Oksana was crouching next to Bagheera, feeding him some leftover bits of meat.

"Oh," she squeaked discovering the powerful raid leader awake and looking at her. "We were all having breakfast while he was watching us with such hungry eyes! He probably didn't want to disturb you so he didn't go out hunting. Am I right?"

I sat up and shook the remaining sleep from my head. Then I patted the panther's neck as he glanced at me guiltily. "Possible."

I kept wondering why Bagheera had not just gone perma—he'd actually come back to life, turning from a zombie into a very real animal. There he was, scoffing meat like there was no tomorrow. It was definitely worth giving it a thought.

I glanced at the clock. So! Ten to eight? Why hadn't anyone woken me up? Then again, I could've set the alarm myself, my fault.

Widowmaker came running—he seemed to be everywhere that day. I nodded at a straw mat by the fire as I rummaged through my bag for the ingredients of Original Brazilian Coffee: a coffee pot, a mixture of some ground beans, some cinnamon and a few lumps of brown sugar.

I nodded at the mix. "Fancy some?"

"Which recipe?"

"OBC. The classic one."

Widowmaker shook his head. "No, thanks. I don't like it. I have my own recipe, Triple Turkish. Highly recommended."

"Okay, leave me a drop, I'll give it a try. How's the situation, overall?"

He set his coffee pot down next to the nearly-boiling mine and reported, "The recce and the beacon group reached their objective safely. They chose four exit points on the castle's perimeter—she was right, it's not big at all, about the size of a Bastion. The kind preferred by lower-class clans. Also, some loaded dudes absolutely love buying them up to pass off as patrimonial estate. How they managed to stuff a thousand chars in there, I've no idea."

"Were you born in another reality? Never seen a hundred square foot studio packed with a dozen illegal immigrants back in Moscow?"

He shook his head. "Don't remind me of real life, please. It's considered bad form in certain circles these days. Honestly, with all this space and opportunity we have here, I'm already forgetting the darker side of life back on Earth."

"That's what we're about to fight for. For freedom and opportunity for everyone."

As he mulled over my words, I checked the raid status. 276 men. Getting real-life players back in the game by morning was a problem and a half. Those who ever tried to get five friends to go on a camping trip know all about it. It's the same with raids: one person would inevitably oversleep, another would have gone on a drinking binge while yet another had fallen sick or alternatively, was nursing a suddenly infirm child. Some could suddenly find themselves in the middle of a major life crisis or simply had communication problems or computer breakdowns. Already as we'd marched out the day before, I didn't think I'd ever seen the three hundred I'd hired. Their numbers kept changing all the time as everyone had a hundred reasons to log in and out. Luckily, the guild promptly replaced them with their reserves—some sort of a virtual subs' bench.

So now too, we were going to wait another quarter of an hour until the ranks swelled. Then we'd change their bind point and start casting raid buffs while dishing out the last instructions. And after that, it was all systems go!

Three cups of coffee and two cigarettes later, I walked out to face the mercs' impeccable ranks bristling with steel and magic. The buffs had just been cast, their last sparks dying in the air. To the abating hum of magic, soldiers stuffed their share of elixirs into quick access slots. Hundreds of eyes studied me, awaiting my command.

I felt that the situation called for something bigger than a simple "Attack!" I summoned Hummungus and jumped into the saddle in two well-practiced motions.

"Soldiers!" I rose in my stirrups. "There're not many permas among you but I do know that all of you love this world. To some of you it may be your whole life, or a welcome taste of freedom, or maybe just a fairytale you want to believe in. Perhaps a job that feeds your families. Whatever it is, this is our world, our freedom and our choice. But the world as we know it is changing. Evil has entered AlterWorld. Thousands of young men and women have been kidnapped and forced to play out every sick fantasy of their pervert owners. Hundreds of thousands will suffer in slavery—provided we don't interfere and punish these monsters! We must squash the snake in its own den! You can't defend virtue without using violence!"

So I spoke, searching for words and mainly finding tired clichés. And still the ranks tensed, frowning. This was becoming their cause, a personal quest for truth and justice.

I decided to up the ante. "We'll storm the castle and free the slaves! Your names will live in history! I guarantee you a raid bonus of one-third of all the loot!"

"Barrraah!"

Widowmaker watched my pitch, looking pleased. I asked him quietly, "Are all wizards ready?"

"Yep."

"Open the portal. Action!"

Chapter Seven

F
rom a classified White House report:

Re: Results of projects code names Tempus, Hephaestus, Moneychanger and Holy Grail.

The report delivered verbally. Any voice recording or taking notes prohibited.

Tempus project manager:

"Currently, the use of the Teleportation to the Alpha Zone spell enables us to transfer virtually any object of reasonable size from AlterWorld to Earth for the duration of a few milliseconds up to ninety-six hours. The decay period of each particular artifact depends upon its size, complexity and structure, as well as its mana content. The self-destruct times of the objects that have no precedent in our world—such as mithril weapons and magical items—are ten times faster than those of mundane objects like a piece of metal or a rock. To our disappointment, we have as yet failed to activate a charm or a scroll—apparently due to their racial or class restrictions. We continue our work in that direction with the aim of improving our knowledge of AlterWorld and destroying the existing barrier separating our two realities."

The Chief Technician, Hephaestus Laboratory:

"We have studied the samples received with the view of their possible integration into our economy or technology chains. None of the samples are stable enough to justify its use. The most prospective technique, in our opinion, would be the creation of alloys. For instance, the addition of 3% real gold to an ingot made by smelting a quantity of AlterWorld gold coins increases its decay period from seventy-one hours to nine days. The experiments we conducted have shown that the addition of physical components to virtual metals results in a rather linear increase in their decay times that is easy to calculate. Comparison charts are available on request. This also enables us to create substances with a set life span. As an example, Gold 8 takes three months to disintegrate, Gold 13 five months, while Gold 19 will disappear from your vault after two hundred days.

"I can also confirm the military's acute interest in the creation of similar mithril alloys. Titan 4 demonstrates a remarkable energy absorption rate in combination with the impact duration which ensures impressive results for both fragmentation and bulletproof armor. Steel 7 increases the life span of gun barrels 210%. The aerospace industry is highly interested in Aluminum 12. To summarize, one could say that the marriage of magical and physical technologies possesses a truly infinite potential, capable of triggering a new technological revolution."

The next to speak was a representative of the Moneychanger project curated jointly by CIA and NSA:

"Our main objectives are the country's security and a return to the times of United States' international dominance. Within the scope of the assignment received, we have used the test material Gold 19 in order to mint almost three thousand tons of coinage of our potential opponents' denominations, mainly yuan, marks and rubles. We then used our untraceable chains of front men in order to sell the resulting gold to certain hostile regimes like Venezuela and North Korea as well as a few Russian and Emirate billionaires. Some of it was spent on the acquisition of certain strategic locations or deposited in private bank accounts in the countries of issue. This allowed us to damage the reputation of the Gold Nine countries and their currencies and succeed in sabotaging their financial sectors, at the same time adding over four hundred billion dollars to the US budget. I would like to use this opportunity to ask you to allocate twenty percent of the aforementioned sum as our standard bonus."

The Federal Reserve System monitor to the Holy Grail Project:

"When the crisis ended with the forced introduction of a gold standard, we lost our main strategical weapon: the mint printing press. Whereas before an aircraft carrier equipped with a nuclear thrust system had cost us fifty tons' worth of paper and ink, now we had to pay for it in solid gold. We can most certainly say that this is the end of airstrike diplomacy. We have lost quite a few key domineering tools such as inflation export and the ousting of governments by means of the so-called flower revolutions—which used to be virtually free before—among other things. Finally now we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. The Tempus project can potentially offer us access to virtually limitless resources and unprecedented magical technologies. I would like to ask you to grant us free hand with the project and ensure other bodies' complete cooperation. And may God help us!"

* * *

The portal jump plunged me into a momentary disorientation, disgorging me onto a dusty footworn dirt road leading to the castle's main gates. Their heavy riveted iron-oak doors seemed impossibly close—thirty paces at most. Our extended recce guys had had some cheek, setting up a navigational beacon right under the enemy's nose. The reporter was going to blow it up to some deed of incredible valor—little did he know I was going to have their ears chewed for stupidly risking the entire op's success.

As I desperately peered from behind the backs of the heavy assault group, my own covering team grabbed me rather unceremoniously under the armpits and pulled me out of the picture. Dammit. I'd completely forgotten Widowmaker's instructions about clearing the portal area immediately so as not to block the other raiders' paths. This was one of the mercs' trademark tricks: compressing their ranks just before the jump, then shooting out like an uncoiling spring through the portal window. That allowed them to port a three hundred-strong raid in under twenty seconds without actually squashing anyone to death.

I swung my head round, assessing the scene. I could see they hadn't expected us judging by the astonishment on the faces of the five external guards still lolling about in the scant shade offered by the gate tower.

Despite their relaxed poses, the guards did manage to jump up and draw their weapons in time. After all, the ten seconds it had taken the assault group to cover the remaining distance is a hell of a lot of time. About twenty raiders rammed the guards' meager uneven ranks, trampling out one of the flanks and hacking at the oak gates as they demonstrated their resolve to absorb a hundred thousand hits and pave the way for the army unfolding behind their backs.

Had all this happened in real life, we'd have had every chance to storm the castle hot on the heels of the retreating enemy, especially because the service entry remained invitingly open. But gaming rules dictated their own strategies: the only locations that allowed free entry for all were shops, taverns and brothels. None of us happened to be on the castle's green list; we didn't have a single personal invitation between us; neither did we know the password or their portal pad's access codes. Which might explain why, despite the door being open in silent welcome but a few feet away from us, we still blunted our swords on the closed gates like a bunch of idiots.

Gaming convention number two—in order to activate a castle's security systems, a mental command needs to be issued by a character in possession of sufficient clearance. And as luck had it, the only guard still alive—a hand-to-hand monk—seemed to have it. His level was unexpectedly high—at least 240, according to Widowmaker's alarmed voice—so he just laughed in the faces of the assaulting soldiers and activated Code Red, listening to the clarion of trumpets behind his back. Then he gave himself to the fight. And boy, was he good. Agile as a mongoose, he dodged, blocked and parried nine blows out of ten—and in doing so, he wasn't particularly finicky, blocking the sharp heavy steel with his bare hands and arms, the remarkable force of his parries making the soldiers grunt with the strain as they tried to keep hold of their weapons that seemed to have a mind of their own. Simultaneously he managed to deal a series of fast sharp blows that made armor sing like church bells, leaving behind angry little fists-shaped dents.

That was an interesting class. There were virtually none of his kind in our cluster: it took a truly Asian frame of mind to play it. Most of Monk's skills were leveled through meditative trances and monotonous katas totally unsuitable for the Russian temperament. No Russian guy would willingly spend hours navel-gazing or caressing the wind with a stork's imaginary wings. Tanking was his style of choice, with ever-thicker armor and heavier clubs. Hit 'em hard and hurl 'em high.

Besides, as far as I knew, the most important part of becoming a monk was a quest pilgrimage to the place of one's own enlightenment which was where, according to the sources I'd read, most of the Russian hand-to-hand fighters broke down, giving the philosophical moods the finger and re-roling to assassins.

Hearing the hum of a dome shield filling with energy, one of our soldiers lost it and threw in his trump card, transforming himself into a bear. His strength and mass tripling, he lunged forward and squashed the nimble monk, ignoring a quick succession of rib-breaking crits. Cold steel flashed in the air, pinning the motionless player down with slurping sounds as jets of crimson splattered everything around.
Bang!
The critical amount of steel in his body finally sent him to the High Plains of Heaven as the bear's bulk collapsed onto the road compensating for the resulting void.

Not a moment too soon. The dome shield finally popped open, sending the battered soldiers flying a good twenty paces, right under the feet of the first line of mercs bristling with steel. The combat service support stepped in, helping the soldiers to their feet, healing them and resetting passive shields.

My turn. I made a show of producing some halfpenny scroll from my pocket, breaking the seal and activating the High Spell. A ravenous twister whirled overhead, soon obscured by the haze of a Minor Dome cast by the group of staff wizards. The clock began ticking.

Hunching and shrinking under the cooldown, I held the spell. I didn't give a damn about mana—after I'd redirected my priestly 5% of the altar mana flow to myself, I couldn't possibly drain my own reserves, almost like Tianlong who was virtually puking mana. Actually, talking about it, I really should review my contract with the old dragon, reclaiming my other half. Not that I could ever be able to go through it, but that was my indignant inner greedy pig demanding his rights.

Just as Oksana—whom we'd left behind in the camp—had said, the castle couldn't afford to hire NPC guards. This didn't mean of course that they couldn't be summoned when needed but to do so, you had to be accustomed to their interface, have money available and survive the fifteen minutes of their respawn times. So apparently, the castle's admins had enough common sense not to call for instant reinforcements.

Still, the castle walls were filling with real players—an indecent amount of them, in fact. Jostling and getting in each other's way, hundreds upon hundreds took their places between the massive crenels. Apparently, the gangsters had some sort of combat emergency training in place ordering everyone carrying a weapon to "report to man the walls!" At least that was what I thought as I ran the virtual cursor over the line of heads in badly assorted cheap helmets. These were all sorts of human miscellany, crowds of low-level whatnots, most likely staff, crafters and higher slaves with an occasional super-dangerous warrior thrown in for good measure, usually way above the 200+. The hand-to-hand monk must have already respawned somewhere else in the castle and had changed into some spare gear. I multiplied his power by the estimated number of the garrison's elite warriors and didn't like the result. I just hoped we weren't going to botch the whole thing.

Having said that, I'd already let the Vets know about the mission. The plan we'd worked out the night before offered them a share of the loot in exchange for the opportunity of a roll with the Asian gangsters, giving their men an extra bit of free training. They could be available at thirty minutes' notice. Also, we could always call for the mercs' reserves, which was expensive and not too efficient if we had to send them into battle straight off. But at least we knew we had that option.

Arrows showered our ranks—more for a psychological effect and to bring down the auxiliary classes' mana than to deal any real damage. The defenders looked like a crowd of low-level movie extras with a smattering of half-decent archers thrown in. The mercs' pets lunged for the wall—about forty elementals and summoned creatures in various degrees of undeadness, distracting the enemies and forcing them to expose themselves and their positions. I glimpsed a ranger's blurred outline shoot past along the wall as he scanned the enemy fighters' numbers and levels, sending the information directly to a trance-like analyst busy merging streams from ten status monitors while missing out on all the action. Any independent raid needed an expert like this even though hiring one sent rental expenses through the roof. But in my case, he was a free gift with my VIP order of three hundred men.

Sixty seconds. A gong sounded, announcing the end of the High Spell. The dome shield collapsed in an avalanche of broken crystal. Too early, wasn't it? The gangsters were apparently too thrifty to afford a decent high-class artifact and accumulating crystals. Shame. I'd already compiled a mental list of all the possible loot behind the castle walls.

Act two. The assault group had recovered and made for the gateway. Now they had a job on their hands: not just to harry the enemy into activating the shield but to literally nullify the hundred thousand on the durability counter. There were only about twenty of them, but even those was a few too many as the tiny bit of free space by the gate tower couldn't accommodate any more fighters, restricting their movements and guaranteeing damage from friendly fire. Arrows and crossbow bolts sprayed the gate over their heads—rather uselessly though, as iron oak is virtually impervious to piercing damage. Obeying Widowmaker's annoyed command, the archers turned their attention to the immediately anxious defenders while the assault group disappeared into a thick mist.