02 gear punk, p.1
02. Gear Punk, page 1
part #2 of Twelve Worlds At War Series
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Newsletter
LitRPG Reads
Prologue
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Epilogue
Tower of Gates
LitRPG Forum
Newsletter
Tower of Gates
GEAR PUNK
A Post Apocalypse LitRPG
By Paul Bellow
Paul Bellow
All Rights Reserved
Copyright © 2020
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Prologue
One Week Before Entering VR
My mother’s brow furrowed. “You apologize to your father right now, young lady.”
“He can’t stop me from going,” I insisted.
I crossed my arms over my chest as my father cleared his throat before speaking.
“The technology isn’t safe. Your mother and I have done the research. We remember the early attempts at VR. All this new stuff is even more dangerous. Are you seriously thinking about connecting your brain to a computer?”
“It’s perfectly safe. Don’t you think I deserve a vacation?”
“Why don’t you go somewhere real?” my mother asked.
“Are you going to pay?”
“That’s enough,” my father said.
He sighed then shook his head, hoping to shame me. It didn’t work.
“I’m going with my friends. We’ll be fine. You’ll both see.”
“You can’t do it. I forbid you.”
My mother shut her mouth and lowered her head as if the conversation were over.
“I can do whatever I want now,” I insisted.
“Not while you’re living under our roof.” She glanced across the table at my father. “Tell her. Make sure she understands.”
He frowned but said nothing.
“I’ll leave then. That’s been my plan anyway.”
“And where do you think you’ll live?” My mother had a way of pushing my buttons like no other human being alive on the planet. “Have you thought about how you’ll pay for a place to live?”
“Maybe I’ll work in a VR world to make some money,” I said, instantly regretting it.
“You can’t do that! She gets this rebelliousness from your side of the family.” My father continued shaking his head. “She takes after you!”
“I’ve listened to you rant and rave about virtual reality my whole life, dad. Can’t you give me a break and congratulate me on what I’ve accomplished?”
“Your sister graduated two years earlier than you.”
“But she’s five years older than me!” I protested.
“Don’t raise your voice at me. Frank, tell her not to raise her voice at me.”
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes, not wanting to get zapped back to my teen years.
“Don’t raise your voice at your mother,” my father said in a rote voice.
They’d been married over twenty-four years, the same amount of time I’d been alive. I sometimes wondered if they were only together because of me. Had my birth been the worst thing that happened to the two of them? At least they had each other. I didn’t have anyone. Getting my degree had been my passion, more important than a boyfriend.
“It’s probably one of those sex VR resorts,” my mother huffed.
“You’re kidding, right?”
I shook my head. Some things I took after my father, like my not believing my mother sometimes.
“I’ve read stories of young women working VR worlds being forced to stay in them and work for free, as slaves.”
“Oh, what’s your source of this information?”
“Frank, tell her--”
“Don’t sass your mother.”
I pushed my chair back.
“May I be excused?” I asked in a mocking tone.
“I don’t know where I went wrong with you.”
My mother at her finest. I stood and walked toward the living room.
“Will you be out late?” she asked.
“Probably.” I didn’t stop walking.
Chapter 1
I stared out at five groups of various vehicles rushing toward us, kicking up thick clouds of dust. Harrison stood nearby, shaking his head. The man I’d ordered into the fuel truck pulled up beside us. I quickly thought through all my options as the noise of the diesel engines increased as the enemy got closer.
“What’s your plan?” the driver asked, his elbow dangling out the side of the window.
“Drive toward them. When you’re close enough, bail and run. After you’re out, we’ll blow up the truck from back here, taking out as many of them as we can.”
“Are you nuts?” he cried. “Fuel’s important!”
“He’s right,” Harrison said. “It’s not a good plan.”
“Do you have any other ideas?” I snapped.
He shook his head. I glanced at the approaching vehicles. They had slowed the closer they got, stopping about a mile away from the fort. I wiped from sweat from my brow as I decided what to do. They were right. My plan sucked.
“Do you want me to do this or not?” the man behind the wheel of the tanker asked.
“Hold on.” I lifted a finger. “Let’s see what they do. This doesn’t look like an attack. We need to bring Missy over to read their minds.”
Over the last year on the first world in the Core, she had honed her psionic abilities. She would be useful for the strangers in the new world. I turned to Enkidu, my black coupe of death.
“Send a message to Merlin. We need Missy to come through.”
“Doing it now,” the car replied in a surprisingly human voice.
“Attacking first might be our only chance of winning,” Harrison noted.
“They’ve got us outnumbered and outgunned.”
“I’ve received a message back from my father,” Enkidu said.
“What’s the message? Is Missy on her way?”
The whole idea of Merlin transferring part of his consciousness to a second world and becoming Enkidu still confused me. Everything else did too, so it wasn’t anything new.
“Missy is busy. She can’t come to read minds right now,” Enkidu said.
I groaned. Ever since regaining her memory and getting psionic abilities, she had changed. I couldn’t put my finger on it exactly, but she scared me even more than when she had been a stabbygirl.
“Should I send a message back?” Enkidu asked.
“No, we’ve got other things to worry about at the moment.”
The man behind the wheel of the short fuel tanker revved the engine.
“Hold on!” I shouted then lowered my voice as I turned to Harrison. “They’ve got white flags. Should we see what they want?”
“I noticed that too, but I don’t think we should trust them,” Harrison said.
“You’re probably right. We should’ve brought Missy to read their minds. I can’t believe she won’t come through the portal and help us.”
She had been spending a lot of time honing her psionic abilities.
“A group of them are coming forward.”
Harrison nodded toward the line of cars and trucks as he raised his plasma rifle. I glanced down at mine and noticed it wasn’t charging.
“Great,” I muttered.
“Huh?”
“Apparently, we can’t recharge these weapons on this side of the portal because they were created on world one. We need cross-world tech. Getting into a battle right now isn’t smart, but we can bring more people through to start creating weapons in this world.”
Harrison nodded slightly, still staring at the six men in light colored clothes approaching. Before they reached us, I ordered what few fighters I had to spread out and make it harder for the strangers to mow us down all at once if they tried. While they moved into the position, the half-dozen men continued forward. One of them held a massive white flag attached to a long, wooden pole.
“Be ready to act,” I said. “If they pull anything, we’ll kill this group, retreat to the compound, then send out the tanker. We can blow it up if the other vehicles try to approach.”
“That’s your plan?” Harrison snorted. “Doesn’t sound like much of a plan to me.”
“Shut-up, will ya?” I took a deep breath as the strangers stopped a few hundred yards away.
“We come in peace,” a man wearing a feathered headdress said.
His clean clothes and demeanor told me he was probably their leader. Four of the others wore rags with patched leather sewn on in strategic locations. They all had rifles strapped to their backs. I wasn’t sure about the last man in robes. A scribe?
“That’s far enough!” I raised my hand. “We don’t want any trouble.”
“Can we approach, so I don’t have to yell?” The man turned to his left and said something to the person beside him before turning back to me. “Under penalty of law, we will not attack you. We need to deliver a message.”
“I don’t like it,” Harrison muttered. “Not one bit.”
“Me either, but we don’t have much of a choice. We should at least hear them out.” I waved them over. “Come closer. We can talk like civilized people.”
The group approached.
When they were a few hundred feet away, I yelled, “That’s close enough! What do you want?”
“Are you the new tribe’s chief?” their leader asked while looking directly at Harrison.
Typical. Always assume the man’s in charge.
Harrison snickered and shook his head. .
“That would be me,” I said, waving a hand. “What can we do for you?”
“What’s your tribe’s name?” the man asked. “What shall we put down in the Book of Laws?”
I glanced at Harrison. He shrugged.
“Fury,” I said. “My name’s Scout, and my tribe’s name is Fury.”
Their leader nodded and peered at the man in robes as he furiously scribbled in a leather bound book. Behind them, I counted at least three dozen vehicles. They could have easily destroyed us. Why hadn’t they? I needed to know more about their Book of Laws.
“Your presence is requested at the next Council of Tribes,” the leader continued. “Welcome to the land of Wargoria, Chief Scout of the Fury Tribe.”
I didn’t break eye contact or show any emotion. “Let me know when and where.”
“We’ll meet at my compound, the largest in the southern lands. My name is Kinsey, chief of the Apex Tribe. You can come armed, but be warned, we outnumber your limited forces. Don’t be afraid of this truth. Accept it, and you’ll do well here in our land.”
“How do we get there?” I asked.
“I’ll send you our best map of this world.” He smiled like a politician. “As a token of welcoming.”
“Thanks. Is it a physical map or electronic?”
“Which do you prefer?” he asked.
“I don’t want to open my communication channels to anyone not in our tribe. Hope you understand. It’s not personal.”
“Not at all.” The well-dressed man snapped his fingers.
Harrison and I both instinctively raised our plasma rifles as the robed man stepped forward.
“Eeep!” He threw up his hands, dropping the book he had been writing in.
I studied Chief Kinsey’s reaction closely as anger washed over his face.
“We’ll leave the map. You can pick it up after we leave. Okay?”
“Perfect,” I said. “We just don’t know you yet.”
“Understandable,” Chief Kinsey said. “Me and the other four chiefs of the southern lands all look forward to getting to know you better. We’ll see you tomorrow evening.”
After bowing slightly, he turned before hobbling back toward the group of vehicles in the distance. His underlings scurried after him.
“That went well enough,” Harrison said, not taking his eyes off them.
“Yeah, it could’ve been a lot worse.” I pointed at a nearby man who had been in our camp when we arrived. “Hey, you, come here.”
The dirt covered man looked to the left then right before tapping his chest with a finger.
“Yes, you,” I said, motioning him over.
“I’m sorry if I’ve displeased you,” he said. “Our last chief--”
“Don’t care about your last chief,” I interrupted. “Do you know how many vehicles and equipment the other tribes have available to them?”
He shook his head. “I’ve never been more than a mile away from here. Xander, our last chief, kept us here. We’re the least successful tribe.”
“Alright, thanks. Everyone back inside the fort. I’ve got some planning to do.”
My command quickly spread to all the troops lined up outside our fenced in scrap of land.
“I don’t know how you do that,” Harrison said as we watched the others walk inside.
“Do what?” I asked.
“Command so well. Nobody even complained.”
I grinned. “High leadership score. One-oh-one now.”
His eyes widened. “What? How?”
My smile faded. I still hadn’t told him about the mod chips.
“I used a couple mod chips back in Shelter 12. We’ve been so busy taming that world and preparing to come to this one, it slipped my mind.”
“You had my mod chips?” He chuckled and shook his head. “I threatened a guy in shelter 11 when they didn’t show up. You’re something else.”
“Becky gave me two of them. I figured you knew about them.”
“Dammit. She denied it up and down, but I knew she took them.”
“You can go back to World One and punish her if you want, but it happened over a year ago. After her and Bull from waste treatment hooked up, they both calmed down and accepted my rule. Can we please just let sleeping dogs lie?”
“Yeah. I just can’t believe she lied to me,” he muttered.
“Oh, were the rumors of you two sleeping together true?” I teased.
“Very funny. You’re doing so well with everything in here, maybe you can get us all out of here.”
We stared at each other in silence. I spoke first.
“Are you still mad you got your memories of the real world back?”
“No, it’s not that…” His voice drifted off.
“Then what?”
“It all seems so pointless now,” he said, surprising me. “I like remembering the truth, but now that I know were just in a game, nothing seems like it matters.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean, but we have to keep going if we want to find answers to the bigger questions like who trapped us in here.”
“When I find the people responsible for trapping us in here, I’ll kill them all.”
“I’m with you on that one.”
While I didn’t say anything about his not mentioning Adolorn, our daughter, as something that matters, it struck me. Being trapped in the Core weighed heavily on all our minds, so I didn’t judge him too harshly for not mentioning her.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get inside with the others.”
Harrison followed as I walked toward the flimsy chain-link gate protecting us. The barbed wire on top helped, but I needed to research better walls. And build more barracks and housing. I sighed as I thought about everything. Back inside the fence, we reached our HQ building in the center of the fort and stopped a few feet away from the entrance.
“We don’t have enough room to bring too many people over from World One,” I said.
He nodded. “We can have them bring tents over for now. And supplies like food and water.”
“That’s a good idea, but we’re going to fill up the camp quickly. We need to expand.”
“You’re in charge.” He grinned. “Start giving orders.”
“I’m working on it. What are you going to do?”
“Help set-up tents for the people coming over. Unless you have something else you’d like me to do? Adolorn has someone watching her. She’ll be okay for now.”
I smiled at his mention of our daughter. He hadn’t forgotten about her.
