Some Sort of Glitch Read online

  Contents

  Bush-League Heroes

  Copy

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  Bush-League Heroes

  Book One:

  Some Sort of Glitch

  Wade Adrian

  Copyright © 2019 Wade Adrian

  Cover Design © 2019 Wade Adrian

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means - except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles or reviews - without written permission from its publisher.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Copyright © 2019 Wade Adrian

  All rights reserved.

  1

  A distant sound echoed just at the edge of hearing; high pitched as it waxed and waned in volume, though even the highs fell off after a time. Broken bits crept in to break the pattern now and then, almost words but without meaning as they stretched out and broke apart.

  "...al containment failure. All staff rep... quarte... Low pow... ...de begins in nin... ...red and ...rty-two sec... Temperature below surv... ...ls in twelve hund... ...ven seconds. Repeat, all sta... ...port to... ...ters. Await fur... ...ions. Do not attem... ...arters."

  The odd syllables disappeared, but the wailing kept on for a few moments more before it too vanished entirely.

  What was left was only silence and darkness.

  Void.

  Not entirely unexpected when one lays their head down, but this one dragged on... long enough that there were thoughts bouncing around Max's head that something might be wrong...

  There it was.

  The familiar login screen appeared before him in the dark.

  He swept his hand at it and mashed the prompt.

  A few spots swam before his eyes and a shot of pain seemed to float right between his eyebrows...

  Odd, but the sensation passed a moment later as the character select screen appeared.

  Gaius stood alone on this field that could hold quite a few others. Of course, there was no reason to have any others. The shining armor and white cloak topped off with a helm sporting little wings was exactly what he wanted to see.

  He reached a hand out to the character he knew so well and the screen changed to a loading bar.

  Max had seen it a thousand times before but... the player count at the bottom held a bit of a surprise. Usually it said things like five, or ten. Fourteen on busy nights. This time though...

  1,978.

  And it was climbing.

  Huh.

  Well, that was a few more than the maintenance crew could account for. Weird.

  The world swept into view before he had time to dwell on it. A bright morning dawned in the distance as birds chirped in the trees. He was at the edge of a small town made up of little wooden and stone buildings with a tropical flair. Grass roofs and the like. Palm trees. Coconuts.

  The sun was fake, of course, but it still felt... nice. Trick of the brain. Too many days without anything outside the windows but stark white or black.

  "About time."

  He glanced over his shoulder to find Castien the Ranger waiting, his foot tapping the dirt as he leaned against one of the buildings.

  Tom wasn't the most patient soul.

  He was decked in his usual dark greens and browns, almost a requirement for rangers. Probably druids, too. Even the metal rings of his chain shirt were green though that had always seemed a tad silly. They were still shiny, so making them green didn't help him hide.

  "Oh? Could have sworn I was logging in early. It's..." Max pondered it a moment. It felt strange that he even needed to. "Tuesday?"

  "Thursday."

  "Wow. Guess that's better, actually. This week has sucked. Be glad to see the back of it."

  "We work weekends too, you know." The ranger shrugged.

  "Well we're not working now." The paladin nodded at the bright ball in the sky. "Praise the sun." His hand swept at the menu to open his quest log. "What were we up to, again? Seems like it's been weeks."

  The ranger grunted, probably in agreement. It was hard to tell sometimes. Tom had never invested many points in people skills, and neither had his character. "Dropped a bunch of lowbie crap from the log before you showed. Trying to chase all of them down was wasting too much time. I want to get to the cap before this stint is over. Blue and up. Fuck green, fuck gray. Also Dave has been sniffing about, but I set him to ignore."

  Dave was rather... gung ho about playing with them, but he wasn't so great at this. Perfectly fine guy really, but he always had terrible plans and did silly shit for the sake of trying to be funny. He had failed too many objectives for Tom to forgive.

  Dave also played a ranger, quite poorly by Tom's standards, which didn't win any points.

  Tom might forget and lighten up in a week or two. They'd need help for something later, surely. They always did.

  "Fair enough." Max nodded. The character sheet for Gaius listed him at level twenty two. Not bad, really, but leveling wasn't exactly speedy. They'd been playing for weeks now. So the ranger wasn't wrong; trying to check everything off the list wasn't doing them any favors.

  It wasn't like the NPCs offering up quests actually cared if they were ever completed anyway.

  He paused a moment before he deleted the same quests out of his own menu.

  It caused almost physical pain given his completionist tendencies... but it made sense. Not like the game was going anywhere, he could pick them up again later.

  "Looks like... west? Group of blues out there."

  The ranger nodded. "Yup."

  Arrows sank deep into any creature of sufficient level they passed. Tom wasn't shy about picking up the odd bit of experience, though he didn't bother to loot them. They had long since passed the point of being selective about loot due to weight issues.

  Max never even got close enough to help. His greatsword was long, sure, but not that long.

  This wasn't new behavior in any way. The paladin didn't so much as look at what Tom was shooting. Nothing would make it close enough for him to need to fight. If it might, Tom would call it out long in advance.

  The grouped experience sharing was all that kept Tom from leveling beyond Max, but the ranger knew it, and so felt justified in shooting whatever caught his eye.

  They wandered past a handful of characters in lowbie gear ganging up on a boar, doing their damnedest to kill it.

  They were outclassed in every way.

  The boar tossed one like a rag doll. It looked like an old documentary about some forgotten tribe trying to take down a mammoth.

  Tom rolled his eyes. "Tch. Idiots." He made a point of looking away as he fired his bow, the arrow wiggling a bit as it stopped, standing out of the boar's forehead.

  The creature fell limp, almost crushing a few of the combatants in the process.

  It had been far below Tom and Max's level. Somewhere in the single digits.

  Eyes turned to the pair. Tom ignored them as he w
alked, returning the bow to his back.

  Max shrugged. "Sorry. You'll get it next time."

  "Don't encourage them." Tom said over the distant obscenities leveled at them. "They were in over their heads. Lucky we came along." He shook his head before sparing them a quick glance. "Who are they, anyway? That's a pretty big group. I know we're ahead on the leveling curve, but did everyone else give up and start over?"

  Max rubbed at his chin. "Now that you mention it, did you notice anything odd with the player count?"

  "No. I didn't look. It never changes."

  "It did today. If it is still climbing it's probably pushing three thousand by now."

  Tom stumbled a step before recovering, his eyes wide. "Seriously?"

  The paladin nodded. "Check it yourself if you like. Those guys? Every last one is probably new. They don't know shit."

  The ranger grunted. "Oh, good. That means the program somehow linked up to something outside, or it leaked to the cryo population somehow. Which makes no sense in either case, as we are supposed to be on a segregated system down here. Why would they have access to our dinky secondary database? Ugh. Grand. Because that's going to go unnoticed."

  "Someone has defiantly been monkeying with something."

  Tom sighed. "Fuck it. What are they going to do, fire us? We're in month two of six here. Not like they can toss us outside."

  "Fire you. I didn't have anything to do with getting the game up and running."

  The ranger cast a level look at him. "That's such a great defense from the second highest level guy in the game, who has fingerprints all over the database from playing for a few weeks. Clearly you are innocent and know nothing."

  "That might look bad, now that you mention it."

  "I maintain that we were supposed to find it. If it wasn't supposed to be on the drive, it wouldn't be. Only other games were minesweeper and solitaire. They had to know that we'd be going stir crazy out here. I mean, it's not even a stock version of the game. It's clearly been modded. Someone knew about it. Besides, every damned bunk has an interface headset, too."

  "I think we're supposed to be using them to learn stuff and better ourselves. There was this great documentary about-"

  "Pfft. Nobody does that. Ugh, though." Tom shook his head. "Game wasn't designed for this many players. Going to be waiting for quest mobs. Joy."

  "Well that is the short term problem. The long term problem is the reprimands and potential loss of future contracts for making unauthorized changes to company systems."

  "It's fine." Tom sighed. "My uncle has a cargo ship. Always needs crew. I'm sure our maintenance experience applies somehow."

  "The same uncle that does shady smuggling runs and gets shot at?"

  "Yeah. That's why he always needs crew."

  "Great."

  "Time for a bit of the rough and tumble." Max leveled his greatsword at the charging kobolds. The little army of dog men had a price on their heads and they fell neatly into the proper level bracket. A poor combination for their continued health and wellbeing.

  The sword shone with the light of the climbing sun as it sundered a kobold, sending halves rolling back to trip its fellows.

  Arrows pelted them before they could recover.

  The footing was poor on the sandy beach outside the old shipwreck the kobolds had been calling home. They didn't build much themselves. Like dog faced hermit crabs.

  Footsteps approached from behind as Max stared down the final kobold. If it had been some manner of heartwarming story the kobold would fight on with strength and valor, proving his people were not truly dirty savages.

  The arrow hit him in the face so hard he did a back flip before falling to the dirt, his leg twitching a few times before finally falling still.

  Not a heartwarming story then. At least not for him.

  "I'm just saying, there's something to be said for imperial rule." The ranger prodded one of the fallen kobolds with his boot.

  "I doubt all the people Vader choked to death would agree." Max returned his sword to his back and opened the quest log.

  "A tiny drop in the bucket next to all the people that would die without such a massive overarching force to keep the galaxy in line. Crime was like, gone." Tom knelt down and looked over what the creatures had dropped, his hand sweeping through the menu. Most of it was undoubtedly garbage.

  "Did you miss the cantina scene?"

  "No. I saw it. And what I saw was a handful of lowlifes who were not doing much one might call illegal, and yet were scared to death when storm troopers showed up. The law came to town, and they were pissing all over themselves even though they weren't doing anything wrong. That's the power of the empire."

  "Okay fine. But that power doesn't have to be evil. You could just as easily have a good government that keeps the riff-raff in line. If it's just as big it works either way."

  "Hardly. They'd be too concerned with maintaining their image and public trust. Due process and lawyers and shit. The iron fist is why it works, man. Public trusts you'll smack them if they step out of line."

  Max crossed his arms and scoffed. Tom didn't need to help with the looting, he'd just get in the way. "So the will of the people means nothing?"

  "Most people are dumb, man. Like, really dumb. Station we're in right now is covered with warning signs and guard rails for a reason. Dumb people need them, but dumb people didn't put them up."

  "I'm never going to agree, you know. People deserve a chance. They can surprise you."

  "I don't need you to agree." Tom poked his head into the shipwreck, his hand holding the wall to keep him from falling inside. "I just need you to think about it. Now it's in there, eating away at you." He leaned back out, his other hand holding a backpack that was a bit worse for wear. "One sack of carpenters tools, recovered as promised. Boom, quest done."

  "Aside from turning it in. It's a long way back. We could kill some time by talking about time travel."

  Tom slung the bag over his shoulder, his face twisting to a grimace. "Don't you fucking dare. I will shoot you in the back, dump you in a shallow grave, and then spit on it."

  "No you won't. It's always a fun exchange of ideas. You'll like it."

  "I have a special arrow I keep for ending this exact conversation." He pulled one free of his quiver, looking it over before raising his eyes to the paladin.

  "I think it's kind of nice that I get a burial after I'm killed in cold blood. It's like, fuck you, but I still kind of respect you."

  "If that's how you want to look at your impending murder, go for it. Blood is not at all cold. That shit is boiling."

  "I don't know why. Causality is simple, really. It's just the opposite of the multi-verse theory."

  Tom's bow creaked, the head of the drawn arrow shined in the sun, pointed squarely at Max. "You think this is a game?"

  The paladin glanced around with a shrug. "Technically? Yes."

  It was a long, tense moment... but the bow lowered. "If waiting for you to do a corpse run wouldn't cut into my schedule, I'd shoot you. And I don't exactly have anyone else competent enough to hang out with in here."

  "Well, you've probably got a like minded person or two in all the new ones."

  "Ugh. Don't remind me. A mountain of useless dickheads. I said competent." The ranger knelt by a small patch of vegetation and pulled a root free of the dirt before munching on it without so much as dusting it off. His health improved a few points, but Max was willing to be hurt if it avoided eating off the ground. His mother had taught him better.

  "Well, I'm glad I hit such a high bar."

  "You should be." Tom swept his hand, his eyes moving about the interface only he could see. "We should get going. Two more quests to hit in this area before we head back."

  There were times the man could be insufferable.

  "Right." Max blinked a few times before he swept open his friends list. He couldn't believe she had slipped his mind until Tom had said something.

  Dave was there, of course
. Dave was always there. But what he was looking for was... ah.

  Rhonda was logged in, but not in the game yet. He wasn't a hundred percent sure she would get a message in a loading screen or the main menu, but it might be waiting for her when she did get in.

  She didn't work in maintenance with them, and Tom no doubt thought she was less than competent, but he'd let her tag along before. Not much choice when he needed Gaius the Paladin to get hit for him unless he wanted to level at a snail's pace only taking on fights a ranger could safely solo.

  Besides, at least she didn't break things like Dave.

  "You're talking to your girlfriend, aren't you?"

  Max swept the chat window shut. "She isn't in yet. And she isn't my girlfriend. She's a friend who happens to be a girl."

  "That's what I said. You both need to get over that awkward phase. Watching you guys dance around it all the time is annoying."

  "The voice of experience? I don't see you dragging up many lady friends."

  "I admit, it's not easy out here. Work a day population is pretty tiny, and I'd probably get in trouble for trying to romance one of the popsicles." The ranger started walking again. "Honestly, I didn't realize your lady friend was even a lady at first."

  "The body armor they put active security in isn't exactly flattering, I admit." The paladin quickly opened and shut the chat window again once the ranger's back was turned.

  Nothing.

  "Neither is the short hair."

  "Fuck you, it looks nice on her."

  "He says, defending the appearance of his not girlfriend." Tom paused, his hand held out and back, fingers splayed. "Hold up... something isn't right..."

  A red spear point erupted from the ranger's back, a curse escaping his lips as he tumbled to the dirt.

  Max's sword gleamed as he swept it forward, leaping to place himself between the ranger and his attacker. His eyes scanned the scant vegetation along the beach. Rocks. Wrecks. He couldn't see anything dangerous... though there was plenty of evidence, and more places to hide.

  "Oww." Tom stretched his hand out toward his fallen bow. "Kind of in the red here. And blinking." The spear still impaling him like a shrimp was much thicker than a spear one might swing around.