The Duty (Play to Live: Book # 3) (17 page)

The golem headed for the gates—slowly but quite surely, scaring off the laborious dwarves and pulling in all the unengaged raiders who tried to hang on to him like a pack of hunting dogs to a bear. I had to give the mercs their due: the prisoners' guards weren't tempted by the melee, they didn't even stare that much. Seasoned soldiers, they knew immediately that the moment was perfect for the prisoners to try to break through—and they knew that the prisoners realized it, too.

I glanced at the petty official in front of me, his face a mask of obedience. He froze in a subservient bow waiting for my orders. This was by no means a warrior. All his life he'd been measuring everyone against his hierarchical yardstick, knowing his own place and the pecking order within it. You could break your tongue pronouncing his title: Guan Jiali—"Armor keeper".

"What kind of creature is that?"

This cross between a butler and an armorsmith curved his back at some inconceivable angle before bleating helpfully,

"Heavy Golem 114, Breakthrough Assault modification. Designed by our brilliant—I call it mad—Master Si Ling. The pilot is Gimmick, his volunteer student. He'll fight for his mechanoids like the berserker he is. Which is exactly what we're witnessing now..."

In the meantime, the golem had almost broken through to the gates, having lost 75% hits. It didn't resemble a shiny new car fresh from the assembly line any more. Then, however, he exhibited some erratic behavior, ducking aside as it stumbled along the castle wall losing sheets of armor and miscellaneous bits of magic on the way. The mercs trailed behind him. Whatever had attracted him there?

"He's creating a ruse..." the armorsmith whispered, his chin pointing inconspicuously at the demolished shed.

I sat up, about to open my mouth, but it was too late. A swift shadow dashed out of the darkness behind the breached wall and leapt across the court, taking away its rider, a gray-haired goblin in octagonal aviator's glasses.

"Can't believe he's gone..." the armorsmith whispered in a simmering fury. It didn't look as if he liked the rider.

"WTF was that?"

"That was Grand Master Si Ling," my self-appointed informer crowed through clenched teeth. "Nine million gold he invested in his own leveling. Skill level 507. He has his own two-level apartment in the donjon and a personal harem of six!"

His eyes glistened with envy, helping me to better understand the powers that drove him: envy, vanity, the desperate craving to be recognized. You need to nurture your relationship with this kind of people in your enemy's camp; you need to hand-feed them and stroke the scruffs of their necks.

Gosh. I cringed as I visualized it. Politics was a dirty business: I really needed to have a sauna fitted in my castle and confess my sins regularly to the Fallen One. Having said that, he was unlikely to admonish me; commending me for my wrongdoings would be more like him. He was a funny kind of god: he didn't teach you humility.

Time to throw the guy the first bone. I tsk-tsked to catch his wary and immediately averted glance, then transferred fifty thousand gold to his account. To do that, all I needed to know was his name, Wang. The goblin, small and agile, startled, a question glistening in his raised eyes.

I PM'd him,

I appreciate the information. Any intel concerning your clan and cluster, their political and economic setups, will be well compensated. Now go. You've been standing here for too long. You shouldn't attract the other prisoners' attention.

Wang contorted again, backing off into the crowd, not daring to turn round in the presence of a VIP like myself. I was probably the only person who could see his nostrils flare, his face shining with triumph: his gifts had been recognized, he'd been rewarded and commended, making him a big man with staggering prospectives. I wasn't upset about the money—after all, all I'd done was return to him the equivalent of what he'd lain at my feet a little earlier, which was an impressive stack of battle scrolls, over two thousand of them. Most likely, he'd pilfered them from the armory hoping to blame looters for their disappearance.

All in all, the money was worth it. Gold shouldn't always be one's objective: it's more of a tool to achieve your goals. There's always plenty of money around, but spies and informers in your enemy's camp are hard to come by, making someone like this Wang guy worth his weight in gold. I just wondered if anyone had already attempted to recruit some of my own men. It doesn't take much if a soul craves money and entertains some alternative morals. A quick PM exchange followed by a soundless money transfer—and he is an enemy agent...

In the meantime, the mercs were so infuriated with the loss of the Grand Master that they had attacked the golem with redoubled zeal. Already much worse for wear, he lasted but ten seconds, collapsing to its knees with the groan of metal subjected to unbearable stresses. It tumbled to its side, raising a cloud of dust over the flagstones as the earth shattered underfoot.

The warriors surrounded the prostrate behemoth like Viet Cong fighters gathering around an American bomber that had been swamping their jungle with napalm and toxic Agent Orange. They pulled out the pilot's unconscious body, disoriented after his loss of contact with the golem, and, shouting cheerfully, dragged him to my feet.

Surprised, I studied a slightly battered fair-haired kid—Gimmick, wasn't it?—who stood out dramatically in the Asian crowd.

"He isn't Chinese, is he?" Widowmaker voiced my doubts.

The boy stopped impersonating a dead body and opened his eyes. "So what if I'm Belorussian? And who would you be?"

"Belorussian!" Widowmaker guffawed and began reciting in singsong,

"We, Belorussians, with brotherly Russia

We sought better roads to a happier life-"

He stopped and squinted at the boy. "How does it go next, d'you remember?"

The kid smiled,

"Together we fought for our freedom and future,

Together we stand now, the victors of strife."

Widowmaker never ceased to amaze me. How was that for checking out the kid? Anyone could call himself Belorussian and pose under any kind of blond avatar. But you couldn't really expect a Chinese to know the original lyrics to a Soviet-era Belorussian national anthem. That would be going too far.

Actually, I should be busy creating a similar native-speaker quiz for my own clan, to blow cover of any potential enemy agents:

1. Who was Kitten Bow Wow?

2. Tell me three Stirlitz jokes.

3. Say the following phrase using only Russian f-words: "What a shame this important part has broken down as I won't be able to find a replacement now; I'm so sick and tired of it all I could go and drop off the edge of the world."

By that time, they'd helped the kid back to his feet and brushed him off, slapping his shoulder rather friendly if suspiciously. "So how come you ended up serving the local thugs, dude?"

He shrugged. "My dream is to become a Grand Master and create unique mechanoids. But you all know, don't you, that a golem animator is the most difficult and expensive specialization in the whole of AlterWorld? There're no tried and tested ways to achieve it as everyone has to find his own, but you can't do it in less than two years and ten million gold."

Somebody whistled. "It's easier to become an MBA graduate and start your own business IRL."

Gimmick nodded. "Maybe. I'm perma anyway so whatever happens in your magicless world is none of my concern. But here, no clan was interested in leveling their own Master. They either can't afford it or they would rather buy another couple of castles. Shopkeepers did help me at first, though. They rushed me up to three hundred but then I had to spend a whole year crafting all sorts of cheap crap for them while struggling to raise profession another ten points."

As he spoke, I sent two inquiries: one to Oksana, still fussing around the trancelike Alexis, and the other to my freshly-minted informer. I wanted to double-check the kid's story using independent sources. I began to form some ideas concerning this golem-building maniac: I had a thing or two to offer him—and I knew it was something nobody else could give him.

Widowmaker in the meantime had zoned out to check on the raid situation. His stare glazed over as he switched to his internal interface, singling out the idle onlookers and dispatching them to their posts.

"So I busted my hump for a year working for them," Gimmick went on, "and then I became a journeyman, traveling out and about and porting to all sorts of funky places. I offered my free services to everyone who was willing to give me a meal and a chance to make anything at all simply to level up my skill. I didn't go too far, though. First time they captured me was in the Romanian nano cluster. One of their Gypsy kings wanted to have an invincible army of steel soldiers. When I told him my price range, he didn't look convinced, so he sent me down to make elixirs for sale. A month later I escaped: I made some nice explosives out of whatever ingredients I had, enough to blow up one-third of their castle. After that, I was captured respectively by Albanians, Malaysians, Pakistani and finally, the Chinese. Lone permas are in for a lot of trouble. Honestly, I didn't resist that much. I just took from each owner whatever he had to offer and moved on," he gave me a disarming smile.

I reread my informers' reports. "So now you have your profession leveled up to 480?"

"Yeah. Twenty more, and I'll be a Grand Master. Then a couple years more to get fifty more points, and I'll become the Greatest Master Animator, the first in AlterWorld!"

I felt like the serpent of temptation in Paradise as I brought my lips to his ear whispering, "How would you like to become the Greatest Master the day after tomorrow?"

Staring at me like a hypnotized rabbit, the kid nodded. "Wha-what do you m-mean?" he stammered.

"I mean a place of divine power that gives +10 to any profession. Your skill will soar beyond your wildest dreams. Besides, we're currently working on summoning Aulë, the patron god of all craftsmen. Are you ready to join my clan to work for yourself and for its defense? And by the way, what are you planning to do once you get your desired skill?"

Gimmick gasped, choking on his emotions, and fumbled with his bag's strings. Stacks of blueprints tumbled to the floor, followed by parchment sheets stamped with colored seals; scrolls spilled in all directions, unfolding like carpet runners. Finally, Gimmick produced a pile of official-looking papers.

"This," he shook them in the air, "is a hundred and six golem recipes I invented and had them patented by the Admins. Recon golems, battle golems, utility golems, stationary golems! You've just seen one yourselves, haven't you? The Cheetah 8 Light Ranger, the one Master has escaped on. It's my design. This one, as well!"

Gingerly, the Belorussian reached into his pocket, producing a thick pack of paper rather worn at the folds. He unwound it into an enormous blueprint covered with the colored signs of power channels, triangular symbols of magic crystals and the round ones of soul stones. My practiced eye glanced at the saucerlike hologram of the Admins' seal in the corner. Below it ran the finely calligraphed script of the recipe. My stare ran along the lines as my jaw slowly dropped:

Mithril, 3520 lb. (approximate costs: 16 million gold)

Accumulating crystals, large, 12 (approximate costs: 1.2 million gold)

………

Divine Blood, 1 serving (approximate costs: unknown)

And to add insult to injury,

Minimum profession level requirement: 575.

"My Juggernaut," Gimmick whispered amorously. "To build it and die, as life will lose all meaning afterward. There'll be nothing left to look forward to."

Chapter Eleven

M
oscow Region. The Home Sweet Home high-security residential estate.

Taali climbed out of the shower. She'd been soaking under its powerful jets for a long time, washing her body clean of the railway grime and trying to rub off the imaginary smell of burnt carbide, gun oil and the droplets of blood eating through her hands. No, she didn't consider herself a murderer. Her conscience was clear: the rapists and killers had simply gotten their comeuppance. If there was a gunshot in response to every stolen child, every racketeered business and every instance of case-fixing by corrupt judges—the world would be a different place. A rifle in the weapons safe by your bed was a much better voting bulletin than the useless sheet of paper you were supposed to throw into the ballot box.

Taali wiped herself dry with a fluffy towel and threw it into the laundry basket, studying herself in the misted mirror. She ran her hands over her full breasts, small but high, and habitually pinched the skin on her stomach, checking for any traces of extra fat. Good enough for a fitness magazine cover. Not a fashion magazine—you could literally feel the difference between an athlete and a model, a toned peach against a shriveled apple with its diet-inflicted skeletal beauty of a malnourished chicken, its slack skin and nominal muscle bruised and contused with the slightest poke. Victims of mass media and artificial beauty standards.

She posed on the spot, smiling at her reflection. Shame that AlterWorld's vibe tattoos weren't available in real life. Her nostrils flared, her cheeks burning treacherously as the memory of the passionate roses that entangled the virtual shoulders of her avatar had gone too far, bringing back the images of her nocturnal exploits with her faithful knight.

Max. She sniffled, her eyes glistening wetly. She missed him. Him, and all the bright colors of the virtual world that was about to become her home for good. She missed her trusted friends and her right to decide her own life and fate. Time to do it, then! Enough excuses! What's the point dragging it out?

She leaned her head back and shook it to pull her unmanageable mane of hair into a ponytail. Struggling to hold all of it in one hand, she reached for a sharp kitchen knife from the shelf. In a few strokes, she shortened her hair into an uneven bob and smiled to her reflection. Dreams demanded sacrifice.

All perma forums insisted on the haircut ritual before the ultimate login. It was a must for every aspiring perma. Some argued that the laws of magic demanded one leave a part of oneself in the old world. Others believed that too much hair inhibited the FIVR capsule's massage functions, encouraging bedsores and hindering brain circulation, reducing one's chances of going digital. Taali hadn't gone into detail, she just followed the communal wisdom.

She donned the bathrobe that Max's mother had lovingly provided her with and walked out of the bathroom, winking to Kostik the bodyguard who immediately zoned out, enveloped by the cloud of her young and fresh body scent. A thought flashed through her mind: wasn't it time to do something truly off the scale? Should she lay the bodyguard, maybe, considering he was already halfway there, bug-eyed. Stupid boy, what kind of professional are you? You're only good to guard supermarket doors. I could stab you with this knife in my own sweet time.

Or should she go back to the mirror, take a nude selfie and post it on every social media site for the benefit of all those who used to drool over her body?

No way, dammit! It was her hormones playing up after a successful mission. Plus the subconscious desire to procrastinate. Leaving the real world to become an unknown perma entity was a bit scary, after all.

"Wake up, soldier!" Taali patted Kostik's cheek and swung round, granting him one final glimpse of her slender thighs through the slit in her bathrobe before stepping into her bedroom.

"So, honey? You're doing it, then?" Max's mom Anastasia Pavlovna asked, busy blacking out the window with a pair of thick heavy curtains.

"I am, Aunt Stacie. Max is waiting for me."

Hearing her son's name, the woman grew quiet. Her face fell, then lit up again. She ought to believe in miracles. Her boy was alive. He kept writing to her, sending her pretty pictures and asking her to come and visit him.

"Of course he is, honey. Give him a kiss from me. Such a shame I can't even send him anything with you..." she turned away, ashamed of her eyes already swollen with tears.

Suppressing disgust, Taali studied the stack of incontinence pads, the catheter's spiraling tube and the pyramid of disposable saline bags.

Clenching her teeth, she stepped forward and tapped in the access code that activated the capsule. Magnet locks snapped. The transparent lid slipped off, inviting her to climb inside onto the soft nanocaoutchouc bed lit by a soft blue light. The bed rocked ever so slightly as it readjusted itself to its user's body parameters installed in its memory. A colorful scattering of status signals blinked impatiently as pictograms switched their colors all to green one by one, reporting successful system tests, connectivity response and hardware control.

Taali slipped out of the bathrobe and left it lying on the floor. She shivered slightly in the chill of the aircon. After a bout of rather tedious preparations, she lay down onto the capsule's supple plastic bed heated to the standard 98.6 F. The locks snapped hungrily, locking the operator inside her transparent sarcophagus. The air return system fans whirred softly. The inside of the lid blinked and lost its transparency, turning into a monitor which offered the girl the choice of immersion parameters. The eye movement control was already on. She didn't have to move at all—only her eyes needed to skim through the messages, her eyelashes single-blinking her chosen commands.

That was it. Now one final ritual the forum users insisted on. Unhesitating, Taali whispered the cult line of the Russian permas' mantra,

"The Deep, the Deep, now I'm yours."
[i]

* * *

We had accepted the Belorussian kid into the clan right there on the spot—him being a valuable expert and all that. Now he was fidgeting behind my back, afraid of getting lost or being left behind—just like a cat that senses the family's removal to a new place so he crawls inside his pet carrier and stays put for hours awaiting the big moment.

Two portals popped open within a minute of each other, disgorging the first groups that we'd sent to retrieve the slaves from the nearest locations. The released captives habitually surrendered heavy sackfuls of herbs, ore and other ingredients they'd farmed. Only then did they take a look around in disbelief to make sure that the castle had indeed changed hands. It was now chock full of unknown warriors and their grim ex-owners who lay face down on the floor, bound hand and foot, prompting a few lynching attempts which were half-heartedly contained by the unhurried mercs.

Widowmaker ran over to me, alarmed. "The guys from the long-range recce group report Shui Fong forces closing in."

"How many?"

He shook his head in concern. "A lot. We've sighted three columns approaching from different directions about two hundred-strong each. Their advance times are different but in synch with each other so as to make sure they arrive here all at the same time. They must be planning an impromptu attack. No guarantees though that they're the only ones coming; besides, there're always portals."

Widowmaker paused, poring over the non-stop flow of reports. His face grew ever more anxious. "The healers and buffers in our base camp are reporting some unhealthy activity. The surrounding dunes are bristling. Our men have sighted numerous footprints and the hiding places of at least several observers. A pack of sand wolves has moved further off, and they're very cautious animals. Our guys also report hearing portals popping at some distance. It looks like their location has been compromised. It's possible that the enemy is consolidating in order to attack them. We have to get them out of there. If the enemy gets to their respawn points, there'll be fur flying. We need every raider to change their bind points ASAP. Max, this is no joke. Our permas are in big trouble. We've just made ourselves a very nasty enemy. If it comes to punches, they won't just let us go. They don't give a shit about Terms and Conditions."

Well, well, well. We had about hundred and fifty archers on the walls plus a few dozen warriors. Considering the gates had been broken, the gangsters could easily catch us with our pants down. "Okay to the base camp evacuation. What's with the dome shield?"

"It's working but we have only two accumulating crystals left, both dry as a bone. It's a miracle they haven't disintegrated yet. And charging them up might take a long time—an hour each at least—to say nothing of the strain on our wizards. That's five hundred thousand mana—half a ton, for crissakes!"

Now that was something I could easily help him with. In actual fact, I could start thinking about opening a small filling station: a place where you could pull in, fill up a dozen accumulating crystals, have your windshield wiped for you and off you go. If some kind of brainiac could come up with a portal to such a station from a besieged castle, it would allow the defenders to stay put indefinitely, pulling faces at the attackers from the safety of their castle walls—as long as somebody kept changing the batteries and sending to this new Shell Mana for replacements. Didn't it feel funny sitting on a pipeline like that! I began to understand the colonial empires' desire to civilize the world's oil regions.

"Bring the crystals here, will you," I said. "I'll charge them up in a blink. How much time can they buy us in the case of a well-coordinated attack?"

Widowmaker cringed, unsure. "Ten minutes? Twenty max. The dome shield artifact itself is crap, but it doesn't matter as long as we have one. Its damage absorption is way below par. Had the crystals been in one piece, we might have been able to withstand two or three hours of serious pressure. And after that, time to get stuck in."

"More than likely, their castle defense has been delegated to an elite quick-response group which is basically what we're observing now. We've been here an hour, and their groups are already hemming us in. Normally, these three hundred fighters would have already ported inside. You need to treble the guards on the walls and check the guild for any groups available for hire, status 0 and 1. I'm going to check the Chinese auctions for any empty batteries to add to the existing ones. Judging by the newsfeed, the Asians have not yet cottoned on to the multi-layered dome idea. Another thing. It looks like we might be stuck here for a while. And if we port the raid to the nearest exit point, we may lose a whole day. What we need to do now is to send a fast-moving group with a wizard to break away and set up as many beacons as they can. The further away we can jump from here, the less we'll have to leg it to our destination. That'll also give us a bigger chance of shaking off the gangsters if they've found out that we keep on plowing ahead instead of fucking off back home."

Widowmaker kept nodding in sync with my orders, copying them into the staff channel. He paused for a second, casting a hopeful glance at the shed's demolished wall,

"And what if we could fit the breakaway group out with golems? Remember that Chinese guy who legged it? No mount could ever catch up with him."

I turned to Gimmick. "Master? Are there any more machines like that in the castle? Actually, what are their performance characteristics?"

The Belorussian kid cheered up. "We really should call them mechanoids. According to the principles of classic magic mechanics..."

"Wait. Make it short, will ya? We've got an enemy at the gates. Cut out the theory, just get right to the point."

He startled, glancing at the breached gates, then hurried, "We were working on an urgent order to create an escort group for the Shui Fong clan leader. He is a real bastard. He loves to show off. A dozen luxury-version Light Rangers with all the trimmings—all gold-plated, engraved and inlaid with mother of pearl. We had assembled eight and had seven more to go. 6K hits, armor at 300, physical damage at just 100, magical at 0. Cruise speed 25 mph with a one-off option of being able to accelerate to 50 mph for thirty seconds in every hour. One-seater, zero cargo capacity. Full regen in twenty-four hours. Field maintenance option available for those who can afford it. The cost of all the consumables for the standard no-frills configuration minus work and the chance of botching the entire recipe, seventy thousand. In gold, naturally. That's it, I think."

"Cool," Widowmaker whispered longingly. "With these things, the sky's the limit."

He turned to me. "May I, Sir? Just to test drive it. If it's worth it, we'll place enough orders with your master to make a whole troop of hobby horses for him."

"Yeah right. You might just as well change your group's name to the Seventh Cavalry. Okay, go ahead and take it for a jog. Just don't set your sights on it and don't forget to check it back in once the mission is over. If you really feel you'd like to see it on the list of your trophies, let me know and we'll think of something. We'll still need to calculate its actual value. Life isn't cheap these days..."

Widowmaker rubbed his hands and began issuing orders, forming a breakaway group. Five extended recon rangers—the elite—slithered toward the precious Golem stable. How's that for being a natural ninja: not a single piece of their armor had clinked, not a single twig had snapped underfoot. No need to spend your life in extended training or sweat over genetic selection. Just invest a point into the skill you need, choose some class-appropriate gear, do a dozen profession quests, then apply your brain and use your hands to mold the resulting dough into a nice little golden crusty pie. You know the type, the one with a surprise in it: the moment your enemy sinks his teeth into it, it bares its own fangs and buries them into his face.