Traitor GIT: A LitRPG Adventure (Traclaon Armageddon Book 2), page 1
TRAITOR GIT
©2023 ALEX KOZLOWSKI
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CONTENTS
Also in Series
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Thank you for reading Traitor GIT!
Groups
LitRPG
ALSO IN SERIES
Reborn Inception
Traitor GIT
CHAPTER 1
Eric pulled up the video of Fiona. The number of times he had looked at it was ridiculous. He had grown his soul, developed his wealth, gained extra allies, stayed beneath the hunters’ radar, and her vivid eyes still sent his heart soaring in his dreams.
0 days 0 hours 57 minutes
The screen in front of him flicked on, and the hostess stood there. “Eric, are you charged?”
He gave the hostess the thumbs-up. She didn’t smile at him and turned back to the guests.
The ship-wide comms clicked on. “All passengers, I’ve checked with the jump pilot. We’ll be leaving on time.”
This was it. He thought they were about to go, and there was no way to know if Fiona would be there. Well, there was, but he hadn’t used them. Hell, he hadn’t even confirmed that she was alive. As the reborn, he had responsibilities. He could not afford to act carelessly, so he had curbed his curiosity.
He watched the video again and smiled.
Soon.
The plan was for them to have no contact until this time, and Eric had the willpower to stick to it.
Barely.
There were a series of meeting places and times over the next few months, and Eric would turn up to every one of them. He didn’t know her situation, but he fervently hoped she would be able to attend one of them. Hopefully, this one.
He was getting itchy feet.
The screen in front of him had pictures of HC#002, with the talking head excitedly pontificating on the new era for humankind that it represented. There was the expansion possibility and the technology boom.
“Yes, there are definite alien remains.”
“Yes, anti-matter factories.”
“As a professor of engineering and alien design, I can guarantee that the technology windfall from these finds will revolutionize how we live.”
It was the same stuff, phrased with different word orders and an alternative C-rate celebrity presenting who had been on all the channels since the system was discovered a month ago.
Nope, nope, he thought. HC#002 would do none of that stuff.
The big red counter on the dashboard counted down from ten. At zero, he would flex his soul that he had already spread through the structure. This one was not a converted slower-than-light craft but an engineered jump ship with soul-touched metal throughout it that helped speed up the process and reduce the time cost.
His mind interacted with the dedicated jump crystal in front of him. The processor within it ran the calculations on his destination. An entire list of numbers that dealt with physical position in space, velocity vectors, and number of alternative dimension positions. For a moment, he ran an internal forecast of those numbers, predicting what the accurate crystal ones were going to be.
When he was aligned, he willed himself to be elsewhere.
Reality distorted with a slightly nauseous shift, and they were in a new location.
As always, he felt hollow, and crushing exhaustion washed through him. That was the cost of the rush of soul energy that had been used to shift them in space and in velocity vectors. This jump wasn’t huge, and he recovered faster than others, but even Eric could not jump without consequences. Only five minutes of fatigue, but he would pretend to be down for ten. If it had been a longer jump, it would have been more and, of course, while his jump pool wasn’t empty, it was no longer full. Until it recharged completely, he could not jump, as other souls had been taken along with him. That larger recharge would take hours. He’d spend ten minutes physically exhausted, yet that time would be multiplied by twenty for his jump pool to replenish and be able to jump again.
It was just how it worked.
They were drifting through space. Eric sipped the sugar liquid via the straw.
Scientifically, it did nothing, but every jump ship had the drink available. The placebo effect was a bitch, and sugar drinks after physical exercise helped. Jump weariness had the same symptoms as heavy exercise, so, of course, pilots demanded the substance they were used to working when they were feeling like this. On a fundamental level, jump weariness and physical tiredness were completely different, so the drink didn’t work. In the future, pilots had given up the pretense, and the drink wasn’t used.
He wasn’t in the future, and he didn’t want to be flagged as the reborn, so he dutifully sipped away.
A shiver went through the entire ship as it docked.
“Time?”
The counter flashed four minutes thirty-eight seconds. It was an impressive jump by any measure to get that close to the airlock. His skill and the guidance system worked together to thread the eye of a needle. Through the floor where the passengers were, Eric heard the excitement. Hell, someone even cheered. On-time arrival was grumbled at, early arrival ignored, and over ten minutes early, you might get a golf clap. Twenty minutes was unheard of. The company’s customers were happy.
With still shaking hands, he touched a screen that gave him a video of the rest of the ship. It was the most basic of people transport. A single large room with fake luxury trim, a scattering of chairs, and about forty passengers. They had all paid to leave the asteroid belt to reach this dedicated entertainment precinct in Earth orbit.
Another touch and the vision from outside the ship was visible. Half of the screens were taken up with the station, but the money shot was Earth. He had to admit it was majestic. The cradle of humanity was the only sight that still choked him up.
“All passengers are free to disembark,” he heard the hostess’s
Smiling faces walked toward the exit. They were here to party, and twenty minutes less on a jump ship was the sort of luck they’d talk about all day. Eric watched as they departed, and when the last one left, there was a creak of movement, and his pilot station lowered down into the main room. The entire wall smoothly opened. The hostess came straight over to him. There was no put-on airs, no deference or snobbishness. She was all business.
“I have rated you as a five.”
“Thank you.”
“Forty credits have been transferred, and a one-way ticket to any of our jump ships within HC#001 for you to get back.”
“What we’re calling here, HC#001.”
For the briefest moments, there was a flash of personality on the woman’s face. “Well, there are multiple systems now. It makes sense to use the alien’s naming system now.”
“Yeah, I can’t believe I’m living in an age where humans are getting a new solar system to explore.”
The woman smiled.
Ding.
She looked at a screen behind him. Her eyes flicked over the information. Then the smile vanished, and the hard-eyed hostess was back.
Eric suspected he knew what was about to happen. “Thanks for the rating, but you don’t need to stay. I know the drill from here.”
She was still reading over his shoulder and was probably going to repeat the company pitch word for word. There was an annoyed frown, and then she put on her most sincere smile. “Do you do this for credit or–”
“To see new places,” Eric interrupted.
“We can offer a permanent gig.”
“No thanks.”
She lost interest in her corporate duty. The brief moment of her treating him as a human vanished with it, and she hurried off to tidy the ship before the next jump. The fact that he had slotted the jump perfectly would probably let her have a coffee before she had to work once more.
Eric watched the program talking about HC#002 while counting down the ten minutes. His job wasn’t to stand out, and that meant he had to pretend to suffer the normal amount of jump weariness as everyone else did.
The time ticked over. “I’ll be off,” he called while leaving the ship. She didn’t even bother to turn; their transaction was completed.
He checked the counter and grinned. He had arrived right on time and in character. Being a Soul Jump temp on passenger ships had been the side gig he had started a year ago purely to justify this moment. If he was only a miner, it might have been suspicious if he abruptly traveled here. However, to future sniffers, all they would see was him taking yet another temporary gig to visit a different station.
He left the airport and grabbed some handles. Ordered it to do tourist stuff, and, in short order, he stood outside an old-era Irish pub on a space station with a view of Earth.
Heart thumping, he walked into the pub while resisting the desire to skip or speed up. It was an impressive bar with a massive window that showed Earth. It had smart magnification in it because there was no way Earth would be that size naturally. However, despite that little trick, it was genuine. The light reaching his eyes had reflected off humanity’s home planet.
For almost a minute, he stood admiring the view and not just because this was what all tourists did. Finally, he glanced around and worked out how the place functioned. You procured drinks at the bar, served by an actual person. It was slow, annoying, and required small talk, but then, with a pint of Guinness, he sat against the window looking out of it.
With no one being aware of it, Soul Scouting activated, and he did a quick tour of the bar. She wasn’t here. It had three levels, with robot table service available on the top two. For his credit balance, he would need to move upward when this pint was finished. He could not afford multiple drinks at the higher price of human service.
Upstairs would be better anyway. The prime lower bar was filled with tourists he didn’t care for. Rough miners. Independent Soul Jumpers and high-flying stars of law firms who were out for some fun. They weren’t his type of people even if, by occupation, he fitted perfectly into the first two categories.
Another sip.
Then, at the edge of his awareness, he felt her. His consciousness jumped to get a visual. She was in a crowd of people, with a shaved head and tattoo on her scalp, a stylized image of a ship departing a planet with two moons. Many proudly wore that design. It proclaimed her adopted heritage of coming from Mars Close Orbit 2142.
The group was like a wave breaking on the shore. They were loud and obnoxious as they entered, shouting and shoving.
Eric turned to watch them. An observer would view it as a natural response to the disruption, but he wanted to see her face.
He saw her with his eyes, but Soul Scouting was more intimate. He could get closer. It was as if he stood next to them and could hear conversations that would otherwise be hidden.
“Sara.” The woman next to Fiona elbowed her hard. Fiona looked at her, and she pointed straight at him.
The blond-headed man next to Fiona guffawed. “I guess Sara’s not buying the first round.”
Fiona, having seen him, hadn’t pulled her eyes away from him. Like a mosquito attracted to a blazing flame, she walked directly at him, ignoring everyone else.
“Bloody Sara and her type,” a big, muscular man at the back grumbled.
“Stop drooling,” the woman who had pointed him out whispered to Fiona.
Fiona distractedly pushed her away and continued toward him. “Is this seat taken?” Her voice was breathless.
“Sit,” the blond man ordered, pushing Fiona into the seat, and then before Eric could do anything, the man was sitting next to him, an arm over his shoulders.
He leaned in to whisper. “Play your cards right, and you’ll have a good time, but if you hurt Sara…” He didn’t finish the sentence, instead choosing to squeeze his hand, which was on Eric’s bicep, hard. The unnatural strength almost made him wince.
“Trent, you bully!” Fiona yelled suddenly. “Leave the poor man alone.”
Trent stood and looked at Fiona. “I would encourage you not to do anything rash, but…” Trent shook his head. “I’ve known you too long. Departure is in fourteen hours.”
“Plenty of time,” Fiona almost purred, just eating him up with her eyes.
“No bloody point,” the big man from earlier said, grabbing Trent and pulling him away. “You know what she’s like.”
“I’m Sara,” Fiona said. “Are you going to buy me a drink?”
“I’m Eric and I’d love to.” Eric swallowed as he reached over and linked fingers. Her thread touched him.
YOU’RE HERE!!!
YOU’RE ACTUALLY HERE!!!
Eric winced, but that didn’t stop the spreading grin. “You’re beautiful. But what do your friends mean by type?”
Fiona lowered her eyes bashfully. “When I like someone, I make sure they know.”
The text message flowed through. I had to set up a cover persona.
“Really,” Eric answered out loud to both bits. “How do you show them?”
“Thoroughly,” she quipped.
Are you here for work or pleasure?
Eric thought about the question.
I am here because I wanted to see you.
