Текст книги "The Clan"

Автор книги: D. Rus

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Текущая страница: 21 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

Chapter Twenty-One

Z elenogorsk Highway, not far from St. Petersburg. Current time.

 

Snowflakes floated in the blue sky landing on Taali's face where they immediately turned into tiny droplets. Sorry to see their beauty disappear, she pulled down the edge of the balaclava, covering her face. After a moment's hesitation, she lowered her large goggles that, apart from their yellow marksman's lenses, didn't differ much from the regular sports ones. Now everybody was happy: the snowflakes as well as the girl who'd become absolutely unrecognizable.

Taali lay on a foam mat spread over the well-trampled snow: the position carefully prepped for her beforehand by her anonymous helper. The spot he'd chosen for her was perfect. A straight half-mile stretch of road lay in front of her—sufficient to shoot as many rounds as she wanted to and at any distance. Then the road made a sharp turn of at least sixty degrees, skirting the forested area where she lay in waiting.

A tiny pink radio—virtually a toy—dinged with a code signal. The target car had cleared the control point. That was the last she'd hear from her unknown assistant whom she'd never be able to identify even if she wanted to.

She rolled onto her stomach and pulled off her warm mittens. Underneath them she wore fingerless suede gloves, soft and thin. She lifted the suddenly heavy Vintorez, pressed the heel of the butt against her shoulder and rested the forestock atop a low ice parapet. The touch of the deadly steel and her favorite smell of gun oil and burnt gunpowder felt calming and soothing. She took several deep breaths to level her respiration. Pressing her cheek to the butt, she looked down the sights.

The car showed up a few seconds earlier than expected. This quiet Saturday morning its police driver hurried to reach her luxury country house. Time to bring her to book. Nine hundred feet. Too early. It took the heavy subsonic bullet a whole second to cover the distance. Its ballistics demanded a considerable adjustment for height and wind.

Six hundred feet. Get set. Taali took another deep breath and began squeezing the trigger softly and gently, millimeter by millimeter. Three hundred feet. The car was within sighting distance. Her optimal range. The one she'd performed best during training.

She aligned the crosshairs on the top button of the corrupt policewoman's uniform and softly squeezed the trigger. Clap. The recoil poked her in the shoulder. For a brief moment, the image in the sights jumped. A small white spot appeared on the car's windscreen, turning into a red blot and generously splashing over the car's insides. Lowering the sights just a tad, Taali fired three more bullets in rapid succession, almost without aiming, into the target's presumed outline. She breathed out.

The heavy car veered to the left, clinging to the central barrier and emitting long trails of sparks as it careered along it, grazing its side. Scaring the few road users with its unpredictability, it pulled over to the other side, crossed both lanes and dove into a ditch.

"One, two, three..." Taali counted the car's somersaults.

Finally, the BMW lost momentum. It stood on its nose, swayed in search of a new equilibrium, then tumbled backwards. Oh well, not a good scenario. According to their plan, the ideal situation would have been for the car to expose its gas tank. In this projection, all Taali could see was the car's reclining front and its creased roof.

Oh well, plan B, then. The last six armor-piercing rounds in the clip could go through an 8-mm steel sheet at three hundred feet. Bang, bang, bang. The heavy tungsten carbide bullets ripped through the engine's vulnerable aluminum casting, showering the area with red-hot shrapnel and fountains of sparks. A clap, followed by an almost-white flash and black smoke bellowing from the car as the fire slowly took hold. Passing vehicles were already pulling up by the roadside, commuters getting out, pointing their communication bracelets at the gory scene in search of five minutes of cheap YouTube fame.

Time to leg it. Dragging all her equipment along, Taali crawled backward a dozen feet. Rising to her knees, she stroked the gun farewell and took a good swing hurling it as deep into the forest as she could. They were going to find it, of course, but not straight away. As her anonymous well-wisher wrote in his message, it was humanly impossible to track the Vintorez to the hitman. The gun was already obsolete, replaced by the state-of-the-art VSS Boor, its production licensed out to at least twenty different countries. Considering all the army depots looted during the Second Georgian war, the Vintorez had long become the most popular and numerous (after the AK, of course) medium-range score-settling weapon—amid pros and amateurs alike. And Taali had every right to consider herself an amateur.

She folded the mat and attached it to her weekend backpack. Then she pulled her skis out of a pile of snow and clicked a switch in her glasses, lowering the mirror filters. Now she had to get to the train station and mix in with the hundreds of Saturday skiers to get home safely. Considering her current mundane appearance, CCTVs wouldn't be much help to the investigators. She'd lie low in the hotel room rented in her dead sister's name. Then in the evening she had to arrive at a second position, directly opposite the casino patronized on Saturdays by those boastful Caucasus-tribal types with their black cars and their young victims.

She had only run for a few hundred feet when a deafening explosion made her look back. A black cloud rose over the little forest. The gas tank had finally exploded. Excellent. Those German rides had big tanks, a good twenty gallons easy. Now they had to wait for the fire brigade and the results of an autopsy which was the only way for them to determine that the policewoman had indeed been shot. Taali hoped it would give her a good twenty-four hour leeway.

Time to go! One more stop, one more shootout, after which she was going to one of those little towns outside of Moscow to meet Max's mother and enter the FIVR capsule's warm womb. Bye, cruel reality; hello, AlterWorld.

* * *

"Attack!" the battle cry gusted across the square drowning out the thousand-strong throng.

About fifty rogues—a popular character choice with mercs—flickered, stealthing. Immediately they unstealthed, only now they stood behind their chosen enemies' backs commencing their tooth-shattering combos. The fun began!

The clap of hundreds of elixir vials popping open all at once signaled the start of the melee. In between hits, hand-to-hand fighters gulped their life potions while mages downed their mana drinks. Wizards didn't bother selecting targets as they bombarded the crowd with mass damage spells, showering the square with meteors and torrential hail. Liquid fire and venom streamed in every direction; arrows, throwing knives and crossbow bolts pelleted the panicking crowd. Sheer Armageddon.

Already after the first few seconds of the battle, hundreds of tombstones began to clatter down onto the cobblestones. The crowd recoiled, hurrying to free up the area around us. Low-level players died instantly. The event had attracted lots of newbs: for anyone between levels 10 and 40 a skirmish like that was a one-way ticket to their resurrection point. Indeed, ninety percent of the attendees presented no serious threat to the mercs—with exception to their numbers as grinding through nine thousand people is no easy task. But the remaining thousand were more than enough against our three hundred. Plus the hundred guards on duty who were already elbowing their way through the human sea. In addition, we expected the King's guards to arrive any moment. Time was running out.

"The dome!" I yelled. The team of wizards on duty opened the Minor Power Dome.

I pulled the scroll out of my pocket. Selecting the dragon's transparent confinement as target, I broke the seal. In a clap of fire, a ravenous twister rushed upward to the sky, the familiar bolts of black lightning swirling like mad dervishes. We were on the right track.

Until now the Patriarch had stood frozen, his incomprehensive stare searching the crowd. Now he'd discerned the source of all evil. He pointed his gnarly finger at us. "Kill them!" he squalled.

About fifty of his staff flapped their cloaks wing-like, raising their hands and pointing them at the mercs. The skin on the palms of their hands began to burst exposing, in the midst of the bloodied wounds, large colored eyes. Blinking the blood away, they glared at us. The next moment, red, blue and green blades of plasma began slashing at our dome, Star Wars-style, sparking and leaving lingering scars behind.

"What's with the Jedi shit?" I croaked into the staff chat. The High Spell cooldown was already weighing me to the ground.

"It's the bastards of Light with their God's Glare. Deals the same damage as a bolt of lightning from a level-180 wizard. I can tell you it hurts," Widowmaker commented as he watched the battle unfold.

I cast a quizzical look at the wizard team's leader. He shook his head, groaning without unclenching his teeth, "We won't hold it. Another twenty seconds max. Distract the servants!"

I nodded to Widowmaker who was listening in, "Proceed!"

He rushed through the staff chat in a whirlwind of orders,

"Group leaders Sissy, Absinthe and Duke! Change of priorities. Priority target: the servants of Light. Allocation of targets: scheme 3."

About a dozen of our rogues darted toward the cloak-wearers, stealthing as they ran. The epicenter of the magic cataclysm shifted, covering the area all around the Dragon's dome including the servants of Light and the first rows of the more unlucky spectators. A dozen archers continued to draw their bowstrings, sending heavy arrows deep into the flurry of flames.

As if it could stop the Patriarch. Raising his flimsy fists to the skies, he shook them, begging ecstatically, "Oh our Lord of Light, hear my plea! Give us strength!"

His God did hear him. The skies shattered, sending scared clouds flying in all directions. The God's irate face showed amid the blinding light.

Divine Blessing alert!

The Sun God has turned his benevolent gaze to the terrestrial quarrels, granting new strength to his followers.

Effect: +20% to ALL characteristics for all worshippers of Light.

Thousands of shafts of light reached down from the sky, highlighting the selected figures and granting them the aforementioned blessing. The funny thing was, at least one-third of my mercs turned out to be worshippers of Light, so we got a share of his attentions, too. Nil nil.

The irate little man kept raging. His sharp eyes singled me out in the crowd. "You!" he shook with anger. "You filthy spawn of the Dark! Here's a stamp to mark your blackened brow!"

The Curse of the Sun God's Patriarch!

Daylight causes mana regeneration to drop 90%!

Duration: as long as the High God or the Patriarch are still alive.

You scumbag! Now that hurt. Really. Or rather, it would have—had I not switched the Altar mana flow onto myself just in time. That gave me any amount of virtually non-stop mana bath.

The patriarch just couldn't leave it alone, could he? His glare burning a hole in me, he began whispering something dangerously long and definitely just as unhealthy. Time to wrap up the show. I turned to Widowmaker and nodded at the priest.

"Try to neutralize him. Ideally, kill him."

More order-rattling. The epicenter of the magic tempest shifted once more, covering the Patriarch and his bodyguards. He managed to take cover under his own magic shield. Then his eyes widened in surprise: apparently, the pressure on the shield was much higher than expected. Shouting encouragements to his men, he activated a portal and disappeared in a flash.

We'd managed to neutralize one of the threats, at least temporarily. Still, the change in the focus of the attack had cost us dearly, giving time for the stunned crowd—who hadn't expected to be attacked from inside—to shrink back, recover their breath and grasp the significance of what was going on. Now that they'd determined our meager numbers, the enemy became furious. It couldn't have been much fun to realize that you'd just been hysterically scratching the cobblestones with your nails trying to crawl away from opposition thirty times your inferior.

The situation had turned on its head. The human flood surged in the opposite direction trying to get to our vulnerable bodies and trample them into the dirt. In doing so, the enemy had produced a couple of clear thinkers who introduced some semblance of discipline and control. The small fry stepped back, showering us with arrows, magic and crossbow bolts. It might be weak, but imagine a thousand-strong crowd of immortal first-graders, their self-preservation instincts disconnected, armed with sharpened steel bars. Would you rather bank on them? I would. This was the case of quantity turning into quality.

Our second problem were the hundreds of pets, ghosts, familiars and the like who'd attacked us from all quarters. There were quite a few pet controllers in the crowd, so now they unleashed their beasties while keeping a safe distance, thus dramatically increasing the numbers of our opponents.

But the main danger came from the high-level players who had finally found their bearings and were now rolling in on us, pushing the bravest of us aside, threatening to drown the mercs by their sheer numbers. The sound of opening portals announcing the arrival of the King's guard was just the cherry on the cast-iron cream cake which was heading toward us with a speed of a cannonball.

Bang! The human flood hit the wall of steel shields and rolled back, leaving dozens of bodies hanging from the spikes. Bang! Rows of our more impatient enemies lunged at us again, reinforced by the pressure from those behind them. Again the human sea ebbed, losing more of the squashed, charred and pierced human shapes that turned into granite tombstones even as they were dropping to the ground. Bang! The third wave pressed into the line of shields so now we were backing up, our ranks serried, the patch of free space in the center collapsing.

Our loss counter quivered and started spinning, faster and faster. But the enemy's casualties had passed the thousand mark, a lot of them slain by their own hands. While we as a raid were immune to friendly fire, the disjointed crowd kept loosing off arrows into the backs of their own warriors, covering them with blanket spells or just selecting wrong targets. How were you supposed to tell friend from foe in a couple of growling paladins jostling each other with shields and spears? Should you smother both in a cloud of Choky Death? This way even if you killed one of your own, you were sure to take out a few enemies, too. And if you managed to smoke someone on the sly, then crawl toward their body amid the fighters' shuffling feet and pick up a precious item from the hapless victim's body—then it was Christmas! This was the only explanation I can offer as for the amount of dead bodies piling up on our front line. We honestly couldn't take credit for at least half of them.

Still, thirty to one was thirty to one. It wasn't as if we were sending a tank against a savage natives' army—we were on a battlefield opposing a matching force. The outcome was easy to predict. We weren't the three hundred Spartans and this wasn't Hollywood.

There were barely half of us left when the dome imprisoning the Dragon split open.

"Change of targets!" Widowmaker shouted without waiting for a command.

Right he was, too. The bonebag wasn't part of our group. We could easily smoke him or at least do him some serious damage with our friendly fire.

Now I could finally see why you needed a raid to capture a dragon. Spreading her wings and breathing venom, this spawn of the Dark began her deadly dance, striking her enemies down with direct emotional hits. Green peaks of poisonous gas spread around us turning the air into a viscous tide of swelling emerald. Not counting on her own accuracy, the blind dragon showered the area with acid rain and fragments of bone, guided by her hearing and glimpses of emotional echo alone. Still, somehow she managed to single out our group in the crowd, restraining her murderous surges whenever one of our mercs happened to cross her path. Thank God for that!

"Go away! Fly to the castle!" I yelled, realizing there were barely a hundred warriors left.

But the dragon was on a killing spree—alternatively, she could be dancing a sacral dance of death for all I knew and couldn't stop it halfway—I'm not big enough on Dragonology to know. The bone lizard kept swirling around like the harvester from hell, grinding thousands of sentients in her wake. I even got the impression that the battle had done her some good. Her eyes blinked once, then again, and lit up—the two pale-green search beams as I remembered them.

"I can see," a thunderous whisper swept over the battlefield.

"Go, now!" I yelled. "Your chicks are hungry! Go home! Shoo! Shoo!"

"Just a moment... A few more life sparks—then the primal seed will rebirth in my chest, the seed of a new heart!"

Pop, pop, pop, portals opened one by one, disgorging the white-clad sea of servants of Light. The unhappy Patriarch had sent in reinforcements although where he'd managed to find so many was a different question entirely. There must have been at least two hundred priests; most likely, the temples all over the cluster—if not of all AlterWorld—stood empty now. Had I known that, I would have asked Cryl to check out their treasury. Then again, they wouldn't leave their assets unattended even on Judgment Day.

The cables of sticky light sprang swirling upward from the servants' hands, entangling the dragon. She tore through them with ease, simultaneously counterattacking, eliminating the priests nearest to her. Still, her speed kept dropping until finally another power line entwined the dragon's bone body and, ringing like an overstrung string, resisted her attempts to break it. Another one lay next to it, and yet another... In less than a minute, the dragon was struggling in a powerful net, breaking her bones, entangling herself even further.

Shit! I bit my lip surveying what was left of my army. Fifty at the most. That was it, end of war. Some general I was.

Ding, the skies rang. The jingle of a billion little bells drowned out the battle.

Macaria! Today more beautiful than ever, in full makeup this time, shining like a Super Nova with divine energies.

"O the Sentient! I am giving you your reward and a purpose on the day of this glorious and equally pointless battle! Accept it as a sign of the gods' gratitude for your faithful service and this exceptional show!"

Ding! The goddess disappeared, leaving behind a few snowflakes floating in the sky. The players' interfaces flashed with a quest message:

New Quest alert: The Glorious Battle.

Divine Macaria will bestow her gifts on anyone for any victory in this battle! Take a look around and bury your blade into any enemy survivor.

Reward 1: 100 Faith points for every Light follower killed.

Reward 2: 200 Faith points for every guard or officer killed

Reward 3: 300 Faith points for every Light priest killed

Silence fell, replaced by cautious sideways glances. Then, simultaneously, the clashing of thousands of swords meeting swords. There were no idiots there. The new quest was exactly what the crowd needed. There were hundreds of mortally wounded lying around begging for the coup de grace, their bodies a promise of rich reward. Allies only a moment ago, now they turned to face each other, slaughtering everyone who still moved. For ten bucks a frag plus loot why wouldn't they?

"Hold the ranks!" Widowmaker shouted, still alive, bringing the remaining mercs into some sort of formation.

"Thank you, Macaria," I whispered soundlessly, activating Appeal to Gods.

The last thing I wanted to hear back was something along the lines of, You owe me one. But today was a day of surprises. With the gleam of her kind smile in the air, I heard a soft, I hereby pay part of my debt.

I shook my head in surprise but immediately switched my attention back to the battlefield. No one seemed to pay much heed to the mercs' thinning numbers anymore. Everyone was busy choosing easy targets: the already wounded and the low-level players, trying to earn themselves as many points as possible before they themselves fell prey to a stronger opponent. In any case, it looked like we'd lost the dragon. The priests had split into two groups, one of which made an outer defense circle, fighting off the attacking crowd while the other group kept tightening the net, breaking the unfortunate creature's bones, pressing her into a gigantic sphere.

"Dragon," I groaned, unable to stop myself.

"I'm sorry," I barely heard her. "Take care of the chicks..."

"Fuck you!" I exploded. "What's wrong with all you, people, everyone bossing me around? First it's those newborn gods, then it's that underage newblette telling me to go and get you, and now you? You're not just trying to die on me, you're giving me more tasks again?"

I was ranting and raving, all the while leafing through my by now quite considerable skill list trying to find something at least remotely relevant. Wait-wait-wait, what was that? The Help of the Fallen One? Completely restore health of any creature in AlterWorld?

I hastily selected the bonebag as target and gasped. 2% Life!

Activate!

Bang! The tangled mess of the white threads exploded, freeing the furious dragon. With a crushing sound, white-robed body fragments went flying. Attacked from both sides, the priests' ranks staggered and broke into helpless individuals. Slaughter had set in.

I glanced at the clock. Fourteen minutes since the start of the action. But the mercs were still fighting. I touched Widowmaker's shoulder. "Why are you still here? The time's up. The contract's closed."

He flashed me a grin. "It's personal now. Well, the dragon is free. You still need us?"

I shrugged. "I don't think so. Thank you for everything!"

"Well, then," he turned to the remains of his army and bellowed in a practiced commanding tone, "Formation type four, arrowhead, direct at the priests! Three, two, one! Barrraah!"

Ten minutes later, I stood amid a sea of tombstones roamed by occasional bediapered human shapes looking for their graves. Even more occasional armored ones studied each other suspiciously, not sure what to expect from the opponent. They'd soon discovered, by trial and error, that the repeat murder of a player brought no faith points, so those flashing their naked butts were mercifully left alone which made me wonder how many of those were genuinely smoked and not just being clever by removing their clothes and stashing them away in their bags. Either Macaria had shown some mercy or even the gods couldn't afford to allocate millions of extra faith points to the prize fund. Had it not been for that particular restriction, the place would have been Armageddon in the flesh. As it was now, it rather resembled a village cemetery on a Saturday morning.

I couldn't see anything past the forest of tombstones. So I summoned Hummungus and gave him a hearty smacker on the nose. I'd missed my Teddy. Pushing pens in the office had done me no good.

I climbed into his tall saddle and had a look around. Far on the other side of the square the Dragon was still chasing single players. A few tight groups were mopping up their areas of responsibility trying not to cross paths with each other.

A few hundred feet away I noticed the shape of a virtual policeman who was studying the battlefield with disapproval whispering something into his communications line. A nasty chill ran through my veins.

The cop sensed my stare and turned round. He flashed a smile full of promise. Then he shook his finger at me, pointed at his own eyes and made a clenched fist—meaning, he was keeping an eye on me, prepared to crush me the moment I stuck my neck out.

'xcuse me? What did he have to do with it? Okay, so a few players engaged in hand-to-hand, slaughtering each other and boosting their PK counter which was an acceptable way to have some fun in the game. The virtual police only dealt with either explicit crimes or money but even so, they showed no interest in sums under a million. Or could it be something personal? AlterWorld seemed to have been exceptionally generous in creating enemies for me. I really, urgently, had to grow: in power as well as in influence and connections. I had to gain some weight and security if I wanted to finally be able to ignore petty ill-wishers.

The cop gave me a mock salute and disappeared in a portal flash. Excellent. You have nothing to look for here.

I shrugged and went on surveying the battlefield. One of the organized vulturine groups seemed to be heading toward me. Sorry, guys, that's the last thing I need. I was about to activate the portal—the bonebag didn't need me to show her the way to her own castle—when I recognized, in the crowd of warriors, the familiar outline of LAV. Whom you could call Hummungus' brother, I suppose.

I nudged my bear, directing him toward Eric. So! This looked like the bulk of the Vets' entire combat section. I knew virtually all of them, so no problems there.

How's that for a meeting on the Elbe! The two bears brushed their sides as Eric and I hugged each other.

"What brings you here?" I asked.

He was about to speak when I heard an unstealthed Dan's voice, "Just checking to see who it was painting the town red this time. The General even refused to bet it was you. Listen, dude, you're getting a bit too predictable!"

Fed up with talking with his head tilted up, Dan pulled an artifact whip out of his bag and cracked it in the air. I liked his mount—a proper knight's charger, gigantic and powerful. Not as impressive as Hummungus, of course, but still.

Once he mounted it, I offered him my hand with a smile. "And seriously speaking?"

"Seriously speaking, we were in town so we thought we'd check out the event they were having here. Eric out of curiosity and me, to level my new pickpocket skill. Might come in handy in my line of work. And there you were, as large as life and twice as ugly. Once the tea party started, we announced a yellow alert over the castle and pulled in a few guys so you shouldn't think you've been battling them all on your own like a Biblical lion. And once that celestial beauty had kindly offered us more of her bottom views, no amount of God's—let alone Goddess'—wrath could keep them back."

"Thank you very much, guys. So what's the score?"

Eric shook a proud fist in the air. "Seven, I got seven of the bastards!"

Dan gave him a pitying look. "I have sixteen. Overall for the Guild, three hundred eleven frags, plus some gear and Faith points. All in all, not a bad day."

With a start, the Vets shrunk back, drawing their weapons and raising their shields.

"WTF?" I turned round to take a look. It was indeed impressive—the dragon, glistening in the sun, was heading in our direction. I waved to the Vets—no worry—and rode out to meet her.

"Priest, I'm ready! Thanks for your help. I owe you. But now I'd love to see my children."

No, I definitely wasn't a dragonologist. Was she a boy or a girl? After the dressing-down the Hell Hound had given me, I didn't dare ask. Or maybe, her skeleton didn't have gender by definition, but once it accumulated a bit of energy, it could start laying again?

In any case, she didn't need to yell. I shook my head restoring my hearing. "Don't mention it. And turn the sound down, will you? My brains are about to explode. In any case, how do you expect us to travel? You're a bit too bulky to teleport."

"We can fly!" the dragon bared her teeth and lowered one wing to the ground as an improvised boarding ramp. "Put your critter back into his artifact and climb up. The sky's the limit! There you can find the ultimate freedom!"

Oh, well. Teleporting would be faster, of course, but who was I to resist the invitation of a dragon ride? That wasn't some Boeing-manufactured aluminum tube shared with a hundred sweaty bodies. This was an honest-to-God, wind-in-my-hair, earth-the-size-of-a-handkerchief flight. Yes!

With a pat on Teddy's neck, I folded him back into his artifact and ran up the bony steps. So! The game developers had thought of everything. A reclining bone chair with anatomic armrests was just as comfortable as your office one. I had barely sat down when the dragon took a quick run and kicked herself up into the air, spreading her wings. A flying mount, the first one in AlterWorld, had taken her rider to the sky!

My inbox pinged. Need to talk, Dan PM'd me, followed by a new message, from Eric this time,

You're too much, dude! Can I borrow your dragon for a ride?