Rifleman: A LitRPG / LitFPS Adventure (Battlegrounds Online Book 1) Read online

  “You can choose to join the United Nations’ Taskforce Sigma’s Tactical Operations Group, or TOGs, also known as the Knights. Or you can join the Wyverns as one of their Scales, or the mercenary group called the Iron Battalion and fight for the almighty dollar. There are others in the gameworld, and you can even start your own faction, but at the beginning you are limited to one of the main three factions.”

  Start my own faction? That was interesting.

  “Your server is limited to one hundred players and is designated as USNE2 or Foxtrot. The gameworld changes based on the actions you and the other players take. There is no reset. A building is destroyed, it stays destroyed until naturally rebuilt by the citizens. If someone is killed. They stay dead. Kill a world leader, and a vacuum exists that needs to be filled, changing the world’s dynamic.”

  I liked the sound of that. A living and breathing world. One that I could directly affect.

  No wonder the server size was limited. Even with a hundred players all making decisions and actions, the processing power to keep up with all that change had to be immense.

  That explained why there was so little information on actual gameplay for Battlegrounds Online. Every server was different which meant every quest was different. No two would ever be alike because no gameworld was alike.

  Crazy.

  I couldn’t wait to get going.

  “You will start out as a Rifleman in an NPC-controlled fireteam. As you play the game, your Primary Operational Specialty and Secondary Operational Specialty will be chosen based on your playstyle. Over time, you will gain your own fireteam of NPCs that are chosen to complement your playstyle.”

  That all sounded good. A party-based mechanic similar to Battle Clans VR. That game had taken some getting used to and wasn’t very popular. That was Golden Realms of Lore, which was geared more toward solo or player party content and not squad-based. I wondered when and what I’d have to do to get a fireteam.

  “You will gain skills based on your actions in the game. You are free to learn every skill there is, but how fast they gain in ranks will depend on your playstyle. Skills associated with your Primary Operational Specialty will gain faster than those with your Secondary Operational Specialty, and ones not associated with either will gain slower. For optimal use of your fireteam, you will want to specialize.”

  That was a little odd. No true classes, but everything based on playstyle. Hopefully I could play around for a bit before having to settle down on a specialization. But wasn’t a specialization just another way of saying class?

  The instructor still had the straight face, eyes staring off at nothing. Earlier I’d thought that maybe he was a player or player-controlled, but not now. He’d just said a lot of words without taking a break.

  “You will be asked to choose a name and a call sign. Either your first or last name must be your real name, but the other can be whatever you want. Same with the call sign.”

  He stopped talking and focused on me, the intense glare back.

  “Any questions?”

  I shook my head. Unlike a lot of gamers who wanted to know everything ahead of time—the best way to min/max their characters, all the strategies, everything—I didn’t. I liked winging it. Just jumping in and seeing what happened.

  Not the optimal way to play, but I didn’t care.

  Since I didn’t have any questions, the instructor took a step back and waved toward the door.

  “Off you go. I have more fresh meat to deal with.”

  I headed for the plain gray door, reaching out for the handle. I stopped and looked over my shoulder. The instructor was watching me.

  “I do have one question,” I said.

  He rolled his eyes, preparing a snarky remark for whatever I asked.

  “What’s your name?”

  That caught him by surprise. I could tell he was going to say something harsh but stopped, confused. He tilted his head, studying me. Finally he smiled.

  “No one’s ever asked me that before,” he said, his voice quiet, not as hard as before. “Crusher. Sergeant Crusher.”

  I knew it. He was the wrestler. Or at least modeled on him.

  Maybe because I had asked the question, Sergeant Crusher snapped to attention, bringing his hand up in a crisp salute. I tried to copy and thought I did a pretty good job. He lowered his hand.

  “At ease, disease,” he said with a smile. “Good luck.”

  I nodded, lowered my salute and opened the door.

  Stepping through the door, I found myself in a square room. Gray walls, ceiling, and floor. Seamless metal, a single light mounted above, another gray door across from me. And words floating in front of my face.

  CHOOSE YOUR FACTION

  Floating under the words were three symbols. They looked like badges and were the insignia of the three starting factions. On the left was the Tactical Operations Group symbol. A shield, flat on top and its sides with a point on the bottom, was behind a small picture of Earth. Crossing behind the earth, in front of the shield, were two swords, points down. In the middle was the Wyvern icon. All red surrounded by a black circle. It looked like the image had been cut out of the circle. Bat-like wings spread wide, a long serpentine neck with a dragonish neck. A long tail hanging down. The last belonged to the Iron Battalion. That was the simplest one. A mountain with a spear in front of it.

  I quickly chose the Tactical Operations Group, codenamed the Knights.

  Nothing happened. The gray room remained, but the words and insignia were replaced by new words that floated in the same space.

  INPUT YOUR NAME

  Underneath were two long rectangles. First Name was written in smaller letters under one box. Last Name under the other box. I wasn’t that keen on using my real name and was glad that the instructor, Sergeant Crusher, had said we didn’t need to. Since everyone playing on this server was in the Eastern time zone with me, the chances were good that I could be playing with someone local. I lived in Boston. There were a lot of people in the city and around. Odds weren’t that slim. There were only a hundred people on the server but still, it wouldn’t be that hard for another player to track me down. Which might be why the game required one part of the in-game name to be made up.

  I knew I was being overly paranoid, but I’d spent so much time playing online and VR games as just a username, that playing under my real name was just weird. I wasn’t really sure why Battlegrounds Online required a name, anyways. We were given a call sign. Why wouldn’t that be enough?

  Well, what did I want to use? I’d spent a lot of time coming up with the call sign. I knew exactly what that was going to be.

  But my name?

  Use my first name, Eric, but not my last name, McCaffrey?

  Or pick a new first name and use the last name?

  Did it really matter?

  Well, yes. It did.

  I was going to be spending a lot of time in this game.

  Hopefully.

  And if they were asking for a name to go along with the call sign, then it meant the name was important and would be used a lot. So, which name to choose…

  This was a military game, and from all the movies and shows I’d seen, and books I’d read, the military tended to use last names. It made sense to keep the last name, since that was something I was already trained to respond to.

  Once that decision was made, coming up with the first name was easy.

  I was playing this game because of my grandfather’s love of G.I. Joe, so why not honor him?

  Jared McCaffrey

  Inputting the name caused the words to disappear; new ones replaced them.

  CHOOSE A CALL SIGN

  I had it ready and waiting.

  Zag

  David, and others that I had played with regularly, always made fun of my playstyle. They called me a wildcard, never really following plans or doing what was expected. When they zigged, I zagged.

  Once inputted, the words disappeared again and the door across from me open
ed. I couldn’t see anything beyond, but I didn’t hesitate.

  I was ready to start playing.

  Stepping through the door, the world went black.

  Chapter Four

  The world came back. Loud and bright.

  Holding my hand up to shield my eyes, blinking to get focus back, I could feel the sun beating down on me. I could hear noises. Lots of noises. Engines. Planes and trucks. Helicopter rotors. People yelling.

  I glanced around, trying to get my bearings. There was a big green metal wall behind me, slightly curved, with the soft sound of an engine to either side. The ground was black and gray. Asphalt and concrete. There were painted lines everywhere. Yellow and white. Numbers and letters painted large.

  To my left, I could see water. Blue, the sun reflecting off it. To the right was more pavement. In front was a two-story building made of brick and metal panel. It looked like the brick was original construction and the metal an addition. There were evenly spaced windows in the brick, gray concrete lintels and sills. The glass was blacked out; no way to see in. Metal panels made up the ends, brick running between them, the panel a little higher.

  Also in front was a woman.

  She was dressed in camo-patterned khaki pants. Green, brown, and black along with a light green T-shirt and black combat boots. Her hair was white, but she didn’t look that old, not much older than me. It was cut short, not a buzz cut, but short. In her hand she held a tablet. She kept glancing down at it, then looking up at me. Impatiently.

  “Good afternoon, Corporal McCaffrey,” she said, and her voice confirmed her age. Soft with an authority behind it. She expected every word to be heard. “Welcome to Fort Hama.”

  There wasn’t much to this fort. One building. I did see a handful of vehicles. A couple jeeps, a truck, helicopters. None of them looked that different from the normal military equipment of the time. Wonder where the near-future gear was? There was a lot of activity in the background, but none of it came that close to us.

  “I am Lieutenant LaChance,” she said, her eyes sharp and disapproving. I wondered why, then it hit me what she had said.

  Corporal McCaffrey. Lieutenant LaChance.

  I snapped to attention, saluting. Or at least hoping that was what I’d done.

  “Ma’am,” I said. It seemed to satisfy her.

  “At ease, Corporal.”

  I relaxed, clasping my hands behind my back. Parade rest, I think it’s called.

  “I am here to help you settle in at Fort Hama,” LaChance continued, looking down at her tablet. She tapped the screen with her finger, swiping at menus. She kept busy while she talked, then starting to walk away. I had to hurry to keep up.

  “I serve as base administrator. Nothing happens here that I do not know about.” She said that last point with emphasis.

  I wondered how many players had tried to get something past her. Probably all of them and most likely they’d all failed. I knew I’d try at some point.

  “If you ever need anything, I am available via your OpsComm.”

  “My what?”

  She stopped walking, turning slightly to glance at me. Her eyes flicked down to my left wrist before she started walking again. I looked down and was amazed to see a watch. I hadn’t worn one in years. With everyone having VRNet access through implants in their wrists, there was no need for watches. They were barely even made anymore. There were some celebs and rich people that wore cosmetic ones, but that was it.

  I had one now.

  And it was big. Almost two inches square; nothing visible. The screen was black and shiny. There was one button on the left and two on the right, held to my wrist by a thick black band as wide as the watch unit, made of something like Velcro. It looked rugged. I noticed that LaChance had one, too.

  “Everything is accessed through your OpsComm,” she continued, heading for a door in the metal panel wall of the building. “On base, it accesses base functions. While on a mission, it serves as team communications and many other functions.”

  “Can I lose it?” I asked.

  I’d used similar items in other games. Most times they were soulbound, meaning they would respawn with you when you died and couldn’t be lost.

  “Yes,” she replied. “But it is biometrically keyed to you. Only you can use it. If anyone tries hacking into it, the OpsComm will self-destruct.”

  Did that mean if I died, the device would stay behind?

  Wait.

  Could I die?

  Sergeant Crusher had mentioned that if someone died in the game, they stayed dead. But that was NPCs only. Right? Did it apply to me as well?

  “Lieutenant—” I started to ask, but she continued talking, either not hearing or probably ignoring me.

  “Fort Hama is the main facility for the Tactical Operations Group. TOG has smaller bases across the world. Taskforce Sigma’s main headquarters is in New York City.”

  The last part of her words was lost in a deep rumbling. The wind picked up, pushing against me from the back. It sounded like an airplane engine building up power. Looking over my shoulder, I saw that the curved metal wall that had been behind me belonged to a large aircraft. It looked to be about a story and a half tall, maybe thirty or forty feet long and fifteen wide. The nose was blunt but rounded, a canopy at the top. The rear end was sloped, probably a ramp. Wings came out the side, missile pods hanging under. Two racks of four. Two tail rudders rose off the rear end, a spoiler connecting them. Running along the hull at the back was an engine pod, another mirrored on the other side. Along the bottom I could see two gunports, Gatling cannons poking out and set in gaskets that would allow for a lot of rotation.

  But what really shocked me were the four large turbine-like fans, the engines that I was now hearing. They were rotated horizontally, and a pressure wave beneath them grew as the fans spun faster. The entire ship was resting on skids that were lifting off the ground, slowly.

  As it rose, the fans started to rotate, halfway between vertical and horizontal. The ship shifted and started rising at an angle.

  “That is a Sikorsky Avionics D25 VTOL,” LaChance said from behind me, speaking loud to be heard over the engines. “We call it the Albatross dropship.”

  I watched the Albatross shrink as it rose higher and higher, the turbines never turning fully vertical. It didn’t move fast—was kind of ungainly—but it disappeared from sight.

  “Wow,” I said.

  Now that was near-future.

  It turned out that Fort Hama was a couple large buildings. When I had turned around, I could see the other beyond the Albatross VTOL. Made entirely of metal panels, it was a couple stories tall, windows running along the top just under the roof. It was constructed tight to the seawall. I thought I could see large doors that would open to the sea. Some kind of giant drydock.

  I couldn’t see any actual docks out in the water but did see some large cannons spaced out along the shore. Each emplacement seemed to have a radar dish and at least three men crewing them. That I could see, anyway.

  LaChance explained that there was another building on the other side of the big one. A combined hangar and motor pool. About the size of the drydock. There was also a high wall surrounding it all, including the airstrip, with regular patrols around the entire perimeter as well as out to a mile beyond.

  “You’ll get your turn at that,” she’d said, once again leading me toward the main building. Did she mean that I’d get stuck out on patrol? That sounded boring.

  The door, plain metal, was set in what I was thinking of as the new addition. Gray door, shiner metal panels around it. It was built out from the brick wall on either side by a couple of feet, not as tall as the wall behind it. A vestibule of some kind. I could see a small pad next to it.

  As we got closer, the pad became a scanner with numbers beneath.

  “Your biometric scans are already in the system,” LaChance said, pointing at the unit.

  She laid her palm on the scanner. Red light flashed beneath it and it lit
up green on top. The door slid open. Silently and upward. She waited for me to step inside.

  It was a vestibule. Plain white walls, another door with a scan pad across from me. Low ceiling. I looked around, stepping to the side to let LaChance in. The door slid shut behind her.

  “Security checkpoint,” she said in answer to my unspoken question. “If you’re not supposed to be in the fort, you’re not getting through here.”

  She pointed at the scanner. I wasn’t sure what she meant, but after she looked at me with a raised eyebrow I understood. Reaching out, I laid my palm down on the scan pad. Red lights undulated as it scanned my hand. There was no noise; the red lights just stopped and a small light lit up green. The door slid up, and I looked into a wide-open area filled with people and equipment.

  I felt LaChance step closer, not touching but still pushing me inside.

  Slowly, I did. My head was on a pivot. Left, right, up. I tried to take it all in and couldn’t.

  Steel joists held up the roof. They spanned the distance of the very large room, a couple columns dropped every fifty feet or so. Two large doors that looked like they slid apart on the front side, taking up most of that wall. There was no daylight, only the strip lighting at the ceiling level, but the place was bright. In the middle, next to each other, one to a column bay, were four large columns with beams running between them. I wasn’t sure what they were. They reminded me of lifts I’d seen in mechanics bays.

  The back wall had a bunch of windows and doors that led into offices. Stairs to a catwalk gave access to the second floor. Along the far wall, parked neatly, were a wide array of vehicles. Jeeps, troop transports, tanks. None of them standard. Near-future for the time Battlegrounds Online was set. Some would be near-future in my time.

  People, dressed in a wide variety of uniforms, moved from one end to the other. Most wore camouflage pants and different colored T-shirts. Others were in olive-green uniforms. All were busy.