Chương 152: CDM 3, Chapter 28: Lunchbreak

We ran another 2 days' worth of C-ranked dungeons and returned to Fort Poolaw. By the time our convoy was back inside the walls, I wasn't sure that a lone day off would be enough. My body was tired and sore, but I could handle that. My real concern was my mind. The strain of the routine left me loopy. The switch from intense focus on crawls to trying to sleep in a Humvee that bounced violently across the Pampas Plains made the prospect of sitting still, of sleeping on an actual mattress, a strange and alien idea.

Hornby called it "Ruck Brain," and Giago described it as "coming out of the suck." Apparently, what I experienced was common among infantry. The intense moments of adrenaline followed by hours of exhausting monotony and crappy sleep added up to the feeling I had now, like my mind had slowed to a sputter and the world around me wasn't quite real. Nathan and de Saint were in the barracks when we came in.

"Welcome home, brave travelers," Nathan said, smiling. Megan bent over and kissed him.

"I'm going to shower."

"Please do." She laughed. When we had all cleaned up, Hornby crawled into his bunk and promptly went to sleep. The rest of us, which included Giago, went to the mess hall. My expectations for military cafeteria food in the middle of a lost continent were low, but oatmeal that was uniformly heated and eggs not made from powder seemed like fine dining after days of rations and cold, rainy nights.

"How was it here while we were gone?" Megan asked.

"I wouldn't hate reading manuals if they weren't half decoder puzzle and half vague bullshit," Nathan answered.

"Sounds fun."

"We've done 10 hours of instruction a day," Nathan continued.

"We are learning every piece of tech we could use on a run. Headsets. GPS. Locator fobs. Radio antennas. Satellite antennas. Monitors. Secure computer hardware. Drone hardware, software, controls, and maintenance."

"They said the goal was to make sure we could use and troubleshoot all of the tools we were likely to have at our disposal," de Saint explained.

"Field independence, basically. Set up quickly and correctly. Fix it if something breaks."

"That all took 50 hours?" I asked. Nathan glared at me. De Saint giggled.

"Tactical Network Integration is no joke," Giago offered.

"Getting all of your tech synced and linked while you're in the field can be a huge pain in the ass."

"Dude, thank you," Nathan said. De Saint added, "The next 5 days are all about cybersecurity and GIS."

"What little boy hasn't dreamed of a CompTIA Security+ certification?" Nathan joked.

"Cisco Certified Network Associate was my favorite GI Joe."

"That sounds like they're giving us a lot of toys," Megan observed.

"Do we get everything they're training you on, or is this more about being comprehensive?"

"Unclear," Nathan answered.

"I hope we get it all," de Saint said.

"We'll need a heck of a setup. I'm talking portable server racks, self-contained databases, a few different heavy-duty laptops, SATCOM hardware. We're even using a specially designed operating system. It's amazing." Megan grinned at de Saint's sincere enthusiasm. She practically bounced out of her seat when she talked about the tech she was learning.

"What have you been using until now?" Giago asked. Nathan thought.

"We found headsets with 687 reviews and an average rating of 4. 3. I had an old laptop under my bed for a drone display. Dorion picked the drone, and that was a mostly educated guess. Umm… Am I forgetting anything?"

"Google Earth," I said.

"Right. We use the hell out of Google Earth." Giago wrinkled his face.

"The CDM made you buy your own headsets?"

"Nah, dude. This is all DIY stuff. Dorion and Megan were doing wild hunts for the fun of it. I elbowed my way into being involved, and Rainy was a lucky get."

"All of those hunt stories were true? None of that was bullshit?" De Saint shifted, a flash of anger crossing her face. Megan shook her head at her.

"We're cool now. It worked itself out." De Saint relaxed.

"Oh, good. I was worried this would be shitty and awkward indefinitely." Giago's gaze drifted down to his plate. He was ashamed and embarrassed. Nathan dipped his head to get into Giago's line of sight.

"Bro, if she says it's in the past, then it's in the past. Don't sweat it."

"Yeah, but-""Permadeath!" Nathan declared. Megan sighed.

"If someone calls 'permadeath,' that means no more talking about the topic. Not optional. Conversation has to shift." Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

"Did we miss any news while we were out?" I asked to help that shift along.

"Few smaller doomer protests at gates, three people were arrested for sniping RAID drones, and someone in the Kielar investigation leaked that they were out of leads and suspects," de Saint answered.

"That's got lots of folks pissed, and the idea that he was killed by the 'deepstate' is getting way more traction now."

"Fuck 'em," Nathan said.

"They burned the first 24 hours screwing with Dorion. Everyone on this thing was incompetent from the beginning." Giago raised an eyebrow.

"I was the first suspect," I admitted.

"I had beef with the Kielar family, so they pointed a finger at me right away. I was sitting on my couch, stuffing my face with nachos when it happened. I was released when they confirmed the alibi."

"Not to mention you don't have the levels to make that shot," Giago added.

"I haven't had the greatest experience with cops. Is that really it, though? They're out of ideas?" De Saint shrugged.

"That's what the statement said. At this point, they've gone through every registered crawler who has an archery proficiency, so they're either looking for someone who trained up archery in secret somehow or a foreign crawler snuck into and out of the country to take the shot."

"And what international crawler with those skills would be able to make that trip unnoticed?" Giago asked. Nathan and de Saint shrugged. That was a reasonable question and likely part of why the public's credulity was increasingly strained by the progress of the investigation. As silly as it sounded, someone having leveled in secret looked like the most plausible explanation, and anyone who could manage that had to have serious connections.

Would the Unsung Heroes, or a similar kind of group, be ordered to kill a domestic crawler? Yes, and Enforcer McDouglas had said as much, but what he implied was more akin to hunting fugitives than carrying out assassinations. If the Unsung Heroes did assassinations, what was the advantage of doing it so publicly? Kielar traveled all over the city.

He was usually accompanied by handlers, but that kind of security was around to keep people from endlessly asking him for photos, not to prevent an assassination attempt. Hitting Kielar anywhere but the memorial service would have been exponentially easier. Still, I wasn't a conspiracy theorist, but I had to admit government intervention wasn't entirely off the table. Fred Hampton of the Black Panthers was killed at 21 during a police raid. In 1983, his family was awarded a $1. 85 million settlement.

That didn't come with an explicit admission of guilt, but most analysts believed that's exactly what it signaled. Edgar Hoover famously said, "The Black Panther Party, without question, represents the greatest threat to the internal security of the country." His list of agitators also included Malcolm X, Martin Luther King. Jr, Elijah Muhammad, and Stokely Carmichael. Malcolm X and Dr. King Jr. were both assassinated, and the level of government involvement had been debated for years but not confirmed.

But those were shit comparisons for Kielar. The only cause he fought for was his own self-interest. He was never publicly accused of killing crashers, but he did have a history of sexual harassment. Lots of crawlers did, though. Singling out Kielar for that didn't seem likely unless the killing was 100% personal and not at all political. But that brought the case back to an earlier dead end: what individual would have the skill and resources to do something like that?

Frank, potentially, but investigators already cleared him. I hoped they never had reason to doubt that conclusion.

"More in the realm of our focus," Nathan said.

"Bugbears in West Virginia are still fucking people up, so that problem isn't contained like they thought it was. Also, three goblin outbreaks went down while you all were camping. Montana, Mexico, and Italy. A couple hundred mobs in each case."

"Job security," Giago joked. De Saint nodded.

"It's been gnarly. The death toll for the goblin attacks was nearing 100 last we looked. Umm… there was one other thing… Right. The active mana debate is getting messy. Nathan's guy Leonard has convinced a few leaders in Europe that more mana crystal research is the best way to fight Stage 2. Make humanity stronger and advance science to the point where we can control active mana, basically."

"Don't forget the IDT," Nathan added.

"Interdimensional travel is part of that plan," de Saint said.

"He argues it should be possible for us to open our own dungeon gates and control their difficulty within the next 10 years. Then our potential is uncapped."

"I was skeptical of Stage 2 for a long time," Giago said after a lull in conversation.

"The science has seemed really hand-wavy, and I never met anyone who had seen it for themselves."

"So you've heard about Dorion's incredible good fortune?" Nathan asked. Giago chuckled.

"Yeah. I've heard a bit."

"Adventure follows him." I laughed.

"I don't think 'adventure' is the right word." A heaviness pressed on my eyes, I realized. Whatever post-mission adrenaline carried me through this meal was gone.

"I'm going to check in with Beth and get some sleep."

"See you in the morning," Nathan said. Back at the barracks, I fought with the Wi-Fi for 20 minutes before I could finally load my email. That brief but frustrating exercise made me exceedingly grateful that Nathan and de Saint would be in charge of resolving those kinds of headaches in the field. Pairing headphones with Bluetooth was enough to send me into a frustrated rage. I finally got to my email and read what Beth had written me: Dor, All of you being away at once is weird.

Tell Nathan that Lil' Dorion has been fed and walked regularly. All of the plumbing and wiring is in at the guild house. Nad-Nade wants to do a meeting later this week to talk about content ideas. They didn't give me any more details than that, so you'll probably hear from me again when that's done. And umm… I think I met someone. Is that disrespectful to Jonathan? I'm still sad that he's gone, but… I don't know how to do this. What's right? What's wrong? What is rude and shameful, and what isn't?

His name is Kwame. We've only gone out once, and he's nice. He's a junior at Pitt and is doing some kind of crawler management internship with the Homestead Strikers. He came into Frank's to pick up an order, and we started talking. But I feel so guilty. Is it too soon to date again after Jonathan? Is it fair to Kwame if I still feel sad about losing someone else? Sorry to dump this on you while you're away. I know you always play it safe, but I am still worried about you guys. Don't do anything too crazy, okay?

-B I didn't think it was disrespectful to Jonathan for Beth to start dating again. I also didn't believe it was wrong to still be sad about losing him while she was with someone else. In my brief time outside of the church, I had met a few older couples who remarried after their spouses passed. They seemed perfectly comfortable admitting that they still loved the spouse they lost, and they would say as much with their new partner sitting right next to them. These weren't jilted exes pining for the one who got away.

They met someone. They loved them. And that person was gone forever. Finding a new partner wasn't an insult to anyone, living or dead. Elderly widows picking up a new beau at the bingo hall wasn't a perfect comparison for what Beth was going through with Jonathan, but the logic tracked for me. Hmm. I had also been told that love wasn't logical, so maybe that was the wrong way to think about this after all? Fuck. Could I outsource the whole subject to Megan or de Saint?

They had to be more qualified to navigate situations like this.