‘So. Here we all are,’ said Nicolai, eyeing the big men and big women (status wise, at any rate) around him. Leaders of all the major groups who’d come to join the Coalition. He and the others were here to meet with them. He’d not given them any time to step back and grieve their recent losses because there was no time.

  ‘Here we are!’ answered Maxine, her expression focused.

  ‘First things first,’ said one of them, an older and balder man. ‘Soul Traps were mentioned as part of the joining package. I don’t know whether I believe you lot about the Trade Link being the only safe place in the event of this castle falling down, but I do want one of these Soul Traps.’

  Nicolai tossed the man a helmet, then threw out more to the rest of them.

  ‘One each, to start with,’ he said as they all Examined what they held. ‘Once you’ve proven you’re here to stick with us, willing to join the fight against the Chosen, we’ll explain how to make your own.’

  ‘I assure you, the Trade Link is the only safe place. We learned so from a being native to this world,’ added Maxine.

  ‘And you trust this being?’ asked the bald man, wearing a frown of doubt as he cradled the Soul Trap Nicolai had given him.

  She glanced at Nicolai, who shrugged. ‘I formed a brief Contract with it in order to test. It was unable to lie to me.’ Before anyone could press him on that, he continued. ‘We need to arm up,’ he told them, then cast a glance containing a calculated degree of disdain at the larger mass of the various groups these people led. He saw few guns. ‘What you guys have will not be enough. Every single Chosen is armed.’ He smiled. ‘Fortunately, you have me. I will be offering very good deals on guns, bullets, vests, explosives, healing methods. I can even provide augments and a method to quickly and easily install them. Everything you need to fight the Chosen, as well as many things that are simply nice to have; Earth food, bedrolls, clothing, hygienic products, and so on.’

  They were all looking very interested. An interest that had risen as he wove his way through his pitch from the more combat focused items to amenities.

  In his various trades he’d come to a realisation. Nicolai would personally have prioritised weaponry and self-protection if he had few points and much he needed to buy. But for most people, what they really wanted were just the little things they’d grown used to during their life on Earth, and which now they were without. Toilet paper. Night lights. Chapsticks. Caffeinated drinks. The various little things that tend to fade away, part of the background noise of human life; until people find themselves without them.

  Increasingly the stock he carried had shifted from purely guns, ammo, and clothing, towards more and more of these little items. Many people were willing to pay a premium for them, and whereas most would be happy with just one gun, they would like enough toilet paper to ensure they didn’t have to go back to the cloth ever again.

  ‘And how much are you expecting us to pay for all this?’ spoke a scowling woman, one he recognised. The leader of the “New Start Communists,” as they termed themselves, Alisa. A woman he’d traded with a couple of times now, with the same serious-looking pair of men either side of her as he’d observed accompanying her last time. She handed the Soul Trap he’d tossed to her over to one of them as she eyed him.

  She had made her upset over the exorbitant prices he’d charged clear in each of their encounters, and he’d anticipated she would seek revenge by causing him some trouble now.

  ‘Alisa,’ he greeted her, receiving a terse nod in response. He spread his arms wide with innocence, smiling. ‘You mistake me. Previously when I traded with you, and a few of the others here, things were different. I was simply acting as a trader. Now, I am here with Maxine, who has convinced me to work with her in her goal: to recruit your help against the Chosen. It would be remiss of me to continue operating for profit.’ He cast his gaze across them, skating from face to face. ‘I will be selling guns, ammo, and grenades, at cost. I simply see myself as a form of transport. I will take points-tags, buy weaponry, and return here to give what was purchased to the owners. I hope you all find this reasonable?’

  There was nodding and smiling all around, pleased as punch. He’d known he would have to stop profiteering on these items—otherwise these people would have refused the Coalition, and might even have been so incensed as to go and join the Chosen.

  ‘But of course,’ he said quickly, and his tone cut straight through their smiles. ‘This only applies to those items. I can only carry so much, after all. I am aware that there are many more things people want. If you want me to buy these other items, I can. But non-combat items will be taking up the space that would otherwise go to weaponry and the fight against the Chosen. So, I will have to charge for that.’

  ‘Seriously?’ started one of them, a young man with a worried looking girl beside him. ‘Bro, come on. If we’re to fight effectively, we need to be able to get whatever we need.’

  ‘What is it you need?’ Nicolai asked him.

  The man chewed his lip. ‘Well. We need to eat, right? What about food? And medicine? Birth control, and things like that. How can we fight well if we’re worrying about… other problems?

  Nice try. ‘But you have been surviving just fine until now, haven’t you? These frivolities can all be dealt with later.’

  The man scowled. ‘They’re not frivolities, I need—‘

  ‘Hey guys, relax,’ spoke Maxine, and her voice immediately silenced them, all turning to look attentively. ‘Nicolai is right. We can’t be messing about, we have to get this done. Once we’re able to deal with the Chosen as equals, then everyone will be going to the Trade Link anyway. Nicolai assures me he will reveal the location when that comes.’ She nodded to him.

  He smiled back at her, seeing the effect her words had on the others. Just as he’d hoped, she had quite some sway. Many of these people were used to her as The Voice On The Radio. Her voice told them about the world, about the dangers, and painted dreams of a future. Her voice was a source of truth.

  And now, Nicolai had gained control over that source. Just a little bit, here and there, but it was enough to aid his goals. He’d gotten his words into her mind and now they were coming out of her mouth.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  ‘So,’ he continued for her, ‘as soon as this messy business is over you’ll be able to buy whatever you want.’ He gave the frowning young man an arch look, one that said—with a nice balance of sternness and kindness—that this is not the time for childish whims. ‘For now, we can’t afford to sit here for days while everyone stocks up on chocolate, cigarettes, and booze.’ He formed a cutting little smile. ‘Haha,’ he added, to take the edge off the smile.

  The young man clearly wasn’t happy about his demeaning manner, but the other leaders—all quite a bit older and whom Nicolai had observed giving the younger man somewhat irritable and long-suffering looks (there was currently a rather bitter generational divide)—were nodding like a pack of wizened turkeys, entirely approving.

  Had the leaders been predominantly young and the elders in the minority, then Nicolai would instead have sought to ingratiate himself with the man while targeting the minority elders. It was an easy trick used by many populist politicians over the years. He’d learned it from the biography of one such individual.

  ‘So,’ Nicolai continued, ‘send over lists of what you want, and provide me the points-tags, and I’ll go fetch your purchases for you.’

  He was very pleased to have navigated this so adroitly. In truth he’d expected it to be quite a bit harder; he’d anticipated significant pressure for him to give up the location of the Trade Link, but fortunately he’d had Maxine to put that to bed earlier. She’d given them the same argument he’d given her, that if everyone knew then everyone knew and the Chosen would find the location in short order.

  Although, he was aware that it remained to be seen exactly how this would pan out. These people would be trusting him with their points-tags, and unless they were very stupid they wouldn’t trust him with many at a time.

  They would want to test things out. Give him some points-tags, and see if he was true to his word and returned with the goods. Inevitably, as the Coalition grew into something more coherent, and he reliably went back and forth to swap points-tags for good, their distrust would begin to fade.

  His pessimistic expectations were proven right when one group handed him only three thousand points worth, then another gave five, and the next four, and the numbers generally continued in this area. He estimated that with the amount of people here—approximately four hundred—these groups should have hundreds of thousands of tags to spend after completing the easy challenges.

  The easy challenges, as he saw them, were; Complete the Trials, use an Imbued Item, and use Soul Sense. Each would give 200 points.

  That was 600 points per person who had done the absolute basics, the ones that every member of a larger group should have ticked off. All of these groups had at least one or two imbued items, and a majority of people had retained their seeds, with Soul Sense being common knowledge. Maxine had done her part there. She’d already been cataloguing and listing Challenges; even finding ones Nicolai hadn’t known about, though these had a similarly low payout.

  600 per person, with approximately four hundred people, came out to 240,000 points-tags. And that was just the bare minimum. He was sure many of these people had completed other Challenges, and possibly even Quests. The “Kill Another Player” Challenge, for instance, was one he suspected many had completed, especially in the more militant and anti-Chosen groups. Then a few of the methods Maxine had been spreading would push it even higher.

  Nicolai estimated in total they should have somewhere between 400,000 to 600,000 points-tags, and he intended to get his hands on as many as possible, one way or another. However, he would have to spend the bulk of points on guns and ammo, to begin with at least. The more groups he could have join the coalition, the better, and there were many more undecided groups out there, though they were all mostly on the smaller side. He’d dealt with some of these before; most weren’t overly interested in Trade Link goods. If they were to join the Coalition and know they would have to face the Chosen, that would change.

  In the meantime he would be making some income, in spite of buying the guns and ammo at cost. As he’d suspected, the desire for amenities was very high. In contrast to his words suggesting he wasn’t eager on having his bags largely full of things that weren’t guns… given the orders he’d received it looked like in this first trip, fully half of the bags would be full of amenities. He’d taken this opportunity to put an even more excessive premium on these items, and had piously informed irritated customers that he was only doing so for the benefit of the Coalition, and reminded them that they should only get things they really needed as they were taking up gun-space (it transpired out people had a lot of things they really needed).

  His creative trading had also benefited from a few more strategies borrowed from Earth corporations. One of these had been the devising of priority orders.

  He could only carry so many things back from each trip to the Trade Link, and the Coalition had a lot of people who wanted a lot of things. Naturally, all of them would like to receive those things as soon as possible. Thus, priority orders. For what he’d described as a “reasonable fee,” but in truth had been a highly lucrative bidding war, Nicolai had moved various people and groups to the top of his list, ranked by weight of priority fee. Currently it was still smaller than he’d like, due to their distrust and decision to wait and see if he actually came back, but he knew in time his take would grow.

  This was another nice benefit of trading with the Coalition. The more people there were, the more competition there was for his goods.

  Humans from Earth were well used to being nickle-and-dimed every what way, as through steady effort Corporations had acclimatised people to every additional fee they could dream up, and thus this system had received little pushback. There had been some, however. This had come when one man had suggested his group help Nicolai out, coming along to aid in moving goods. Fortunately, Nicolai hadn’t even had to deal with this himself.

  The other groups had immediately argued that if any of them got to know of its location, all of them should know. Human nature meant none wanted to see any other gain benefits unless they also gained those benefits.

  However, the issue of being able to carry a limited amount with only him, Jo, and Beth visiting the Trade Link was a serious issue. After some internal debate, Nicolai had decided on revealing the location of the Trade Link to John, Cait, and the rest of them.

  He wanted points fast. There was risk in revealing the location of the Trade Link to the others; each person told was someone who could be caught and interrogated. But at this stage he felt it was a risk he had to take.

  The castle was entering its endgame. Time was short, Paxolnaz was pressing, and he was not yet prepared. Some risks had to be taken.

  Fortunately, Nicolai had been able to find a way to minimise the risks. He had the group make paired Contracts amongst themselves. These Contracts specified that they would not share the location of the Trade Link with any other, unless both agreed. It was an idea he’d had some time ago, but it was only now he opted to put it into practise. Of course, the others were very happy.

  It wasn’t foolproof, but it was good enough.

  ###

  Over the next few hours he and the others transported large amount of goods from the Trade Link to the coalition, until a problem arose.

  ‘The Chosen are leaving their base en-mass,’ spoke one of the scouts over the Radio. Maxine had called for numerous scouts to be placed in distant, well-hidden vantages to observe the exits from the Chosen’s base—one of a number of measures he’d suggested, in his private chat with her over Local.

  When this news came the Coalition scattered, and Nicolai’s big trade day came to an end.

  Unfortunately, he had not made the points he needed. Completing even one of his unfinished Major Nodes was still out of reach.

  There was still much demand for amenities which he would work to sate over the following days, but he wasn’t sure there was quite enough for him to get all the points he’d need.

  He had another option but it wasn’t workable as of yet. For now, his current best strategy was to grow his customer base. The Coalition needed to be larger.