The Duty (Play to Live: Book # 3) (30 page)

"Widowmaker? Tell the rangers to return to base. Enough retreating."

His tired face lit up. "Are we gonna fight?"

"We are, we are. And we're gonna make it tough. I want them to pee their pants next time they hear our names."

An excited hum ran through the ranks. Talk about confidentiality. What one merc hears, another posts in the chat, and ten seconds later your secrets are known to half the cluster.

With the tinny sound of two pots colliding, I slapped Widowmaker's carved mithril shoulder pad with my steel gauntlet, jolting him back to reality. He blinked, closing the interfaces. "The rangers will be here soon. Do we have a plan or do we play it by ear?"

"We don't. Lady Luck is too fickle to rely on. What I'd like you to do is create a detailed map of this valley here. Make a grid of, say, a hundred by a hundred feet. Set up a portal beacon at the center of each grid point. If we don't have enough wizards, hire some in from the Ferrymen. I need the map and the spotter at HQ at all times. I need to be able to open any portal any time at any particular grid point. We'll cast a portal directly from the Guild Hall so that's where we'll need to concentrate the bulk of our forces."

Noiselessly he repeated my orders into the chat where they triggered a bustle of activity among the senior officers. Hearing my last command, he raised his eyebrows. "There're not enough of us to split, Sir. Now the gangsters, there's way too many of them."

"I know. Which is why you're now going to the Guild and hire as many men as you can get. Don't even think about the money, just spend as much as it takes. Gold is only a means to one's end. I'm going to drop a couple of lines to my friends, too. I might bring in a few Vets here."

He nodded, thoughtful. I turned to the Belorussian who was busy studying the wall's foundations. "Master Gimmick, time to deploy your cavalry. I have a technical question, though. We need to hold this hill against superior enemy forces. What do you suggest? Should we erect some quick fortifications or add your golems to the ranks?

Thoughtfully he buried his hand in his unruly hair. "Let me think. The gangsters only had one Assaulter and you did a nice job of it when I was trying to... to escape. It may have already regenerated 30% or so, plus we can always attempt a quick field repair but that'll cost about 500 gold. There're also seven universal mid-range ones with plenty of complementary parts allowing us to adapt them to a wide variety of tasks. But riding them involves Golem Driver skill. Any drivers in your party?"

I glanced at Widowmaker. He nodded. "I'm sure I can find a few. There's no shortage of those wanting to drive a golem. Shame it's so costly."

Gimmick kept chewing the cud. "Regarding the fortifications, I've no idea what to suggest. I have a few ideas about creating various siege engines and mobile shields but that's gonna be a lot of work."

"What I suggest, Sir," Widowmaker interrupted, "is that there's no need to reinvent the wheel. All of your campaigns have always been purely offensive which explains why you've overlooked an entire recruitment institution: tailor-purpose teams. They come in all shapes and sizes: engineering, mapping, mining groups, even targeted elimination services. I'll tell you more, they even have harem teams. Seriously, you want to become a Padishah for the night? All you need to do is hire an expert team of elite concubines for some guaranteed ecstatic pleasure."

"Yeah, right. Distracting the gangsters with some belly dancing in the middle of the desert? I'm afraid, our swords can do a much better job. So which of these experts would you recommend? For a start, they'll need to form a defensive circle and be able to hold it for an hour."

"One sec," Widowmaker sat down on the sand and flexed his fingers, then began fidgeting his hands in the air using the old-fashioned touch interface. How's that for an age test? He had to be in his thirties: the younger generation preferred mental control via optic nerves.

He scrolled the pages only he could see, occasionally slowing down to comment. "So... Twenty top Amazon archers—hired out. Shame. The girls are elite to end all elite. It takes them one shot to bring a mammoth to its knees. The Berserks and their leader Rabid Dog—they are only good for a storming action. Trash 'em. Now here're The Sage: siege vehicle operators. They're right for us. Hiring options: trebuchets, ballistas, catapults—no, too bulky, we've got nowhere to put them. And what's this?—twelve mounted glaive throwers, that's good. Almost twenty grand plus the ammo."

He looked up at me. I nodded my agreement to part with the money.

"Excellent. I'm moving them to the Shopping Cart. Now that's interesting. The Sturdies, a dwarf building team. They've got patents, a wide offer of designs, a good portfolio... no, they won't do. Not enough time. The only thing we can build is a Secure Field Camp and it's only ten thousand hits—only good against some second-rate monsters. And this... this looks interesting.
'Mobile Dome Shields for rent. All options. 5,000 to 100,000 absorbed damage. Recharging accumulators not included.'
How about it?"

I nodded again. After the temple's unexpected level jump, my share of the mana flow had increased to 900 per second. That was serious enough to begin considering a potential chain of Laith Oil filling stations, bringing the task of leveling the Altar to the forefront of my attention.

Now that he had a free hand in spending, Widowmaker was prattling away, hiring a miscellany of lower-class teams,

"A stealth assassin group. Into the Shopping Cart. LYNX Whirlwind, a wizard team with top mass damage branches. Totally handicapped in terms of gameplay but lethal when it comes to group fighting. Into the Shopping Cart you go. The Hospitaliers,
'a buff, heal and resurrect all-in-one raid offer, complexity no objection'
. Might be useful. Aha, there they are! Mechanical Drivers. Shit, that's expensive. A grand per head plus liability for any damage to the golems. Virtually no heavy ones, mainly mid-range and light rangers. Oh well—in for a penny, in for a pound."

His voice faded in anticipation of my outrage at his spending spree. But I didn't really mind. Easy come, easy go. I'd wanted this campaign to improve my image and reputation and it had to be worth the million gold I'd set aside for it. Not good to backpedal now. I needed to contact the Vets ASAP seeing as I finally had the priority access codes.

Okay, what have we got here? Private audio conference:
initiate
.
Add new users:
Frag and Dan.
Enter optional password. Dial.
Howdy officers! Looking for bad guys to fight?

It took the gangsters two hours to finally trust in their luck. Apparently, they'd managed to corner the Russian bear in the best possible place. They didn't know the reasons behind our lingering there but they could always come up with an explanation of two if they really wanted to. We could be searching for an ancient artifact or a new resource—like a mine or a cluster of precious crystals,—or we could have stopped for some complex quest or ritual, whatever. The main point was that the nasty Russian intruders had finally slowed down and set up camp bristling with steel within a circle of iridescent power shields and renewable mist screens. Cracking the enemy's defense with superior forces was something our adversaries were quite good at.

Our staff sat straddling the wall like a flight of swallows perched on power lines. We had to risk it for a good field of view: below you couldn't see jack shit.

Oh well; if before I had hoped to keep our forces ratio at one to three—which was why I'd asked Widowmaker for reinforcements twice and invited the Vets to join our defense—now I was biting my lip, praying that the current one-to-eight disparity wouldn't get any bigger.

Seven hundred foot soldiers against almost six thousand Chinese gangsters that ever kept coming, their vulturine flocks gathering for this man-made event. Granted, our ranks grew too—there were plenty of clans around wanting to give their warriors a free rush through the meatgrinder with no potential political repercussions. Rumors of the upcoming scuffle were spreading fast, my inbox blinking incessantly with join requests from some very serious institutions.

By then, the situation had long been out of both my competence and my comfort zone as the approaching clash was quickly swelling to the size of a full-blown battle—possibly, outcome-changing. Still, I bit the bullet and switched on my poker face as I continued to follow the plan—I simply scaled it up as I kindly accepted more offers of help, carving out more areas of responsibility to fresh ambush regiments.

Eric had arrived with the Vets and was now standing next to me. Sensing my pent-up anxiety, he poked me in the shoulder by way of reassurance. Indeed, you could have cut the atmosphere with a knife. Pointing at the sea of enemy soldiers studded with dozens of colorful flags, he tried to relax the atmosphere with a joke,

"Look at all this attention to us humble rangers! Now that reminds me. This medieval Russian warrior goes to Siberia, stands on the Chinese border and shouts, "Hey! Do you have a hundred thousand warriors among you? Come over to that hill and we'll have a good scrap!" So they throw an army together, a hundred thousand warriors, and off they go for this scrap and they never come back. Two hours later the Russian warrior appears from behind the hill again and shouts, "Hey! A hundred thousand Chinese warriors, come and have a good scrap!" Same thing happens. The third time the Russian comes out from behind the hill, "Hey! A hundred thousand Chinese warriors, come and have a good scrap!" They were just about to go when a wounded Chinese warrior crawled out from behind the hill and groaned, "Don't listen to him, it's a trap! We were ambushed! There were at least two of the bastards there!"

The raiders guffawed with relief, turning round to look at their comrades: there were definitely more than just two of them there, meaning they could do it!

The growing rumble of magic hung in the air like the roar of a hundred airplanes gunning their engines. The sky lit up with the echoes of far-off aurorae. Both were signs of the nearing battle as the gangsters began casting mass buffs on their dense ranks. The leaders of clans, alliances and independent groups rode past the ranks of kneeling warriors astride a plethora of wondrous mounts, lifting their men's religious and moral spirits.

The final show of saber-rattling and the shouting of cadences ended in an echoing victorious uproar,

"
Wansui!
"

Their ranks stirred, falling into separate layers like a lasagna. A thousand archers stepped forward, followed by pet controllers ready to turn loose their bestiary of hundreds of amazing creatures. Next came cloth-armor casters flexing their fingers and gulping down their elixirs. The remaining ranks blended into a uniform mass glistening with steel: these were all kinds of warriors.

Dozens of officers voiced an inaudible command in unison. Drums rolled. Hundreds upon hundreds of bow strings slapped against the archers' leather bracers as thousands of arrows filled the sky, eclipsing the sun and granting a momentary relief of sudden shade.

A moment of cooling bliss amid the scorching desert, then the sky pelted us with torrents of piercing death.

Chapter Seventeen

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

The squat dark-haired man, his nondescript appearance a masterpiece of plastic surgery, lay his binoculars aside and emitted an envious sigh. Some people had excellent stomachs. Regular as clockwork.

The guard at the entry gate of a private residence had finished his unhurried lunch and beelined for the restroom as he'd done many times before, kneading a cheap cigarette in his fingers and leaving the task of entry control and gate operation in the reliable even if dumb hands of his computer. In theory, he should have summoned a relief guard—there were three of them on every shift. But the other two enjoyed an episode of the after-lunch siesta and all they were still capable of doing in reply to his request was raise a middle finger. Little wonder: we saw less discipline at Russia's most classified installations, so what could be expected from a remote housing estate that advertised security services as part of the package—a great soundbite in its colorful flyers and catalogs.

The dark-haired man's name was Sergei Petrovich—or Gray, as he was known in certain Internet circles, a counselor analyst on the payroll of various fly-by-night offshore companies. He reached into his pocket, producing a transparent plastic bag. With great caution he pulled out a silicon mask. The 3D printer had done a great job copying the mug shots of a nameless junkie who was now lying several miles away, strapped down in a deeply induced drug haze. Only the practiced and observant eye could notice the difference, and the guard with a clockwork stomach could hardly boast good observation skills. Still, it was never a good idea to risk pointlessly exposing oneself.

He pulled the mask on and smoothed it out with his fingertips which were slightly insensitive from the layer of artificial skin embossed with another person's fingerprints. He pussyfooted toward a battered car he'd confiscated from the junkie two days ago before spending an entire twenty-four hours in the garage, rebuilding and retuning, making sure it didn't break down on him at the least opportune moment. It wouldn't do to stall right in the middle of the estate during the final stage of his mission.

As it was, he didn't feel at ease. He had no reason to do so: he'd successfully completed the first contract. The target's death certificate had been pulled out of the city database without a glitch and the case itself closed for lack of evidence. The girl died of a heart attack, shit happens. And still the assassin had the nagging feeling that he'd had been had. The girl hadn't been put to rest six foot under—no, she'd been placed into a cryostat which in theory granted her a new chance, however ephemeral.

So if she could ever crawl out of that plastic coffin of hers—say, in three hundred years or so—her reappearance could negatively affect his reputation as a problem-solving expert. He intended to live that long at least. He could afford all the transplantation he needed; besides, the scientists in one particular sun-drenched banana republic were already growing his clone, preparing it to part with its consciousness and surrender its perfectly toned body to the aging Gray. Had someone managed to cross the state-of-the-art security perimeter and get behind the institution's tall walls, they'd be shocked to recognize the younger versions of the world's first leaders in the hundreds of children raised there. How had Gray's clone ended up in such respectable company? Well, certain favors can't be measured in terms of money. They can only be returned.

The rust bucket's revamped engine started first turn. It was a good job that the ancient ride had one of those obsolete high-octane combustion engines. The assassin had filled it up generously to make sure it went up nicely once the junkie, allegedly on the run after a "random" killing, "lost control" of his car sending it over a cliff.

The scan of the RFID windscreen tag he'd intercepted earlier worked like a dream. The gateway camera blinked its welcoming blue eye. The wrought-ironwork gates parted. Had his car not been identified, the human guard would have stepped in, but now he was probably still staring at his observation monitors, bored to death, studying the camera image of the estate gym or a nearby pool terrace.

He drove up the deserted streets. His first stop: an unoccupied house a few hundred feet away from that of his target. Objective: setting up the crime scene. Scenario: because of the security's negligence, the junkie's modest technical skills had allowed him to penetrate the guarded residence and burgle a few houses, finally being confronted by one of the owners—an old lady. Panicking, he'd shot her on the spot. A knife or a crowbar would have been better but Gray couldn't stand the sight of blood.

He pulled out a cheap EMP generator and inserted a disposable capacitor. Turning his face away, he pressed the button, rendering all electronic devices dead within a hundred meters. A few whiffs of smoke wafted toward him, bringing the stench of burnt insulation from security cameras, alarms, white goods and other home appliances.
Time to get moving.

He darted toward a fashionably flimsy front door and broke in, then rushed through the cottage, seemingly imitating a thorough search and throwing a few expensive-looking items into his bag. Then he scampered back to his car and collapsed onto the seat, catching his breath as he replaced the capacitor and unholstered a pneumatic injector loaded with a dissolving gel capsule. The capsule contained an instant-acting formula that guaranteed the illusion of deep sleep for an average of thirty minutes or so. Any insomniacs here?

He soon found one, a bodyguard whose presence immediately trebled the bill the assassin was going to present to his customer. The man was sitting in a car with a wound-down window, his cigarette-holding hand tapping the outside of the car door to a tune on the radio. Driving slowly past, Gray gave him a friendly smile, then unloaded the injector into the reckless bodyguard's pumped-up bicep.
Good night, buddy—and for future reference, smoking in the car is never a good idea. Had the cig dropped inside, you could have easily burned alive.

He parked up behind the security's SUV and activated the EMP generator again, giving the steering wheel a pat of approval: apart from the stereo, whatever meager electronics the junkie's car had, had long given up the ghost.

The front door was locked. He rummaged around in the small hiker's sack on his chest for a jimmy bar. Easy. The old and battered but perfectly tuned Makarov PMM gun—one of the many thousands looted from police warehouses in the dangerous 2020s—felt snug in his hand. A perfect weapon for his junkie scape goat, not counting the half-decent DIY silencer. If it lasted ten rounds, that was all he needed.

Gray stole inside the lounge, confidently searching the premises: the unsuspecting developers had uploaded the cottages' floor plans onto their website. Having checked out the lounge, the kitchen and the utility room, he decided that the lounge was the best place into which to lure the old lady as it offered a good view of the front door.

Picking up a heavy vase from the table, he weighed it in his hand and slammed it against the wall with a satisfied grunt. Tinkle, tinkle. He loved it. Come on, granny, enough of that nonsense, come to daddy!

He glanced over the shelves looking for something else he could break with gusto. The loss of concentration cost him dearly: when he turned back, he was facing a tall fit young guy with a shoulder holster. A second bodyguard? That wasn't in the contract!

The bodyguard glimpsed the gun in the assassin's hand and ducked, disrupting his aim and pulling out a rare automatic Stechkin.

Fucking antique collector
, Gray thought, turning the barrel after every shot as he put round after round into the weaving body. The unfortunate guy collapsed and, despite being apparently taught how to fall, he hit his back on the corner of a massive cabinet. His eyes opened wide in silent agony, his body failing to finish its trajectory, his chest catching the heavy 0.9 bullet.

The assassin's mind exploded, climaxing, as he celebrated his victory and his divine right to give and take lives. Smiling, he moved the sights to the bridge of the guy's nose. Wide with pain and fear, the bodyguard's eyes were already clouding when he forced himself to turn his wrist, pointing the gun at his killer. Three rounds thundered out, deafening in the confines of the room, drowning out the PMM's quiet cough.

The room submerged into an outer-space silence. Then the assassin's shocked auditory nerves recovered, bringing sound back to his world: the clatter of the brass shell cases landing on the floor and his own wheezing as he struggled, downed by a double impact to his side. He pulled up his shirt and swept his hand under his concealed ultralight bulletproof vest, gasping with pain from his broken ribs, then grinning as he realized that he'd live. As for the bones, they would just have to knit. Not for the first time.

Grunting, he scrambled back to his feet. Wretched bodyguard! Unable to help himself, he put an extra round through the guy's forehead, just to make sure. Better safe than sorry. You never know, the guy might come to and spray his back with automatic fire. The silencer was already on its last legs, so—even though the local security admittedly didn't know their job—he had to hurry to make sure no more volunteers crawled out from the woodwork. Granny, damn you old bitch, where are you?

Gray staggered upstairs and checked the first bedroom. No bed inside: instead, the sarcophagus of a FIVR capsule blinked its eerie green lights in the room's air-conditioned chill. He stepped closer and peeked through the observation hatch. His eyebrows rose.

Well, well, well. If it wasn't his third target! She'd disappeared from view already in St Petersburg. All his attempts to locate her had failed, very nearly compromising him in front of the cops who seemed to have been equally impatient to find her. This was one fucking good bit of luck. He'd be able to close this dubious contract there and then, so that tomorrow he'd be sipping martinis on a sea shore surrounded by a gaggle of accommodating long-legged models.

Grinning, he pointed the gun at the girl's nearly motionless chest and squeezed the trigger.

* * *

The dome shield glittered, seethed and bubbled overhead like an enormous pool of rainwater during a summer downpour. Thousands of needle-sharp arrows showered us from behind the clouds only to turn to smoke and ashes as they collided with the deceptively flimsy iridescent film of the magic shield. The dome operator that came with the hired artifact frowned as he watched the accumulating crystal's glow fade before his very eyes.

Click!
Gingerly I pulled the first empty battery out of its seatings. Forty seconds. Too fast, way too fast. I knew of course that the Mobile Crystal was ten times weaker than the Stationary one and still the ten crystals that came with the dome would barely last ten minutes, and that's if I kept charging them up. On my signal, the operator's assistant dragged the empty battery toward me, casting scared glances at the dome that was caving in under pressure. I connected it to the Altar and winked back as all eyes around me opened wide in surprise. No wonder! Nearly a thousand mana per second, less than a minute to fill it up—how's that for a promo from Laith Oil?

Okay, now that I knew my time margin, I could get down to business. I peered at the enemy ranks, searching for a suitable target until I decided on a separate group that was fussing around a cumbersome and complex-looking ballista. I ran the virtual cursor over their bodies, selecting them one by one and excommunicating them. Could Macaria ever have thought of a mass excommunication option? Was I supposed to poke six thousand Chinese with a cursor? I'd certainly be in a state by the time I was finished! Besides, I might simply not make it...

Another spent battery clicked open just as I excommunicated the group's last engineer. I turned to the spotter. "A separate group at two o'clock, distance nine hundred, reference point: ballista. Eighty engineers. Engage!"

He wrinkled his forehead mouthing something, then tied the coordinates to the map and sent them down the staff channel. "Grid E14, eighty back row heroes, engage!"

My mental clock was ticking as I imagined Widowmaker receiving the message and expediting the necessary number of fighters, lining them up in a zigzag like a leaf spring while the wizard responsible for that particular grid was setting up a portal. Go!

The portal swelled open a couple of dozen feet away from the ballista, extruding two hundred warriors in a couple of heartbeats. A quick briefing, then they descended on the unsuspecting engineers in a tidal wave of steel, twisting their arms and dragging them to the portal. In less than ten seconds, all you could see was a steely wall of mercs where the Chinese in their colorful clothes had just been. The warriors were already retreating to the portal, covering the backs of the few greedy pigs who'd decided to pilfer the ballista.

One of the enemy officers must have sussed out their predicament as the group nearest to the portal grew restless, falling into a V-formation. Too late! The ballista's bunk disappeared behind the portal's iridescent film, followed by the rearguard. Another portal popped open to a roar of indignation from our opponents. The ranks of buffers at their rear flickered with new figures that our radars identified as friendly. Now the enemy showed better reaction times: two hundred of our warriors struggled to keep them off while others were slaughtering their cloth-armor casters. I even thought I saw a few especially reckless gangsters dive into the closing portal after the mercs.