NOVEL NEXT Chapter 65: Logistics
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Claire: You don't think about prep school girls as predators—but we were, and we took it very seriously. A whole dorm of solo predators hunting at cross-purposes.
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Saturday, November 16th, 2090, about 2:05 pm MST, Montana City
At first, Claire had been hopeful.
Gordon had actually come up with some good ideas. She was going to be the turret—casting Fireblast from the top of the prisoner wagon. Harry would play nursemaid, because of course he would. That was just how their dynamic worked. Karen—well, Karen would ride in circles on a horse, always near something, because that's what passed for battlefield control in their party these days.
It wasn't perfect, but it was what they had.
The morning of the stream, Claire put her hair in a high ponytail, snugged the port into the back of her neck, and let the space-age pillows cradle her spine. A modular fan across the room stirred a light breeze over her bare feet—she hated having them get hot. Harry was already suspended beside her, strung up on his bungees, armor gleaming. They were alone this time—for obvious reasons.
The Blue Ghostlands icon blinked past. The great tree. Moonbeams over still water. Then the intrusive little hint that always made her wince:
Ghostlands optimizes itself to your storytelling preferences. If you push an NPC too far outside its comfort zone, the local moderating AI may take over.
Then she loaded in.
Already upright, already in place, on top of the iron-shod prisoner wagon. Her headdress mostly charged, her ceremonial loincloth whipping against her thighs in sync with the fan in her room.
And for a moment, Claire felt that pang again. Not quite guilt. Not quite regret. Just... remorse.
Karen—Cuts_by_Karen, her username still made Claire roll her eyes—was dual-wielding two mismatched armor picks, because she hadn't gotten to her swords in time. Why hadn't she gotten to her swords? Because Claire had burned them. Oops.
They had about 30,000 live viewers. A deceptively small number, Claire thought. For a world with billions of players, it was a sliver of a sliver of a fraction. But for their sponsors, 30K was money. 2K was money. They were going to make money.
"This will go really badly," Karen commented. "Or really well. Either way, it should be a good show."
Claire unmuted for the intro, as was standard.
"In honor of Gordon's absence, and due to our limited roster today, we'll be muting combat commentary from the perspective of the players."
Dreamstream activated.
Claire nodded to herself, earrings sparking tiny embers as she began casting.
"Our goal," she told the camera, "is straightforward. We have six wagons: a prisoner transport and its twelve guards, a royal coach and four more guards, the mess wagon, the route master's wagon, and two filled with grain for the priests of the Black Barony."
"We'll be traveling from Noob City through the bamboo forests, the cherry blossom fields, and the King's Orchards. If all goes well, we arrive in the Barony without anything catching fire or exploding," Karen added, stepping up beside her.
"This long-form format was requested by user Randoon_the_Wizard to help build group cohesion and viewer retention. Randoon, if you're watching—thanks. Even if this doesn't work, we appreciate the thought," concluded Claire.
Housekeeping done, Claire turned to the task at hand. She shook her head once—more embers—and let the motion flow into the sigil for Alarm.
It shimmered silver across her palm, then rippled out across the convoy at a slow walking pace—substantially slower than Karen's horse, which was moving down the train with a will.
Alarm was not her usual spell. Gordon wasn't here. Without him, there was no one to relay danger forward and backward across the caravan. That meant casting. That meant her grimoire.*
She hated the thing. Too big. Too slow. But she'd memorized what she could, and she was determined to make it work.
The spell passed over the carts like a sheet of pale water, occasionally sparking orange when it hit a wagon wheel, a barrel, an axle. Claire watched it impassively.
"False positives are inevitable," she muttered. "But better noise than silence."
For once, she got to cast something new. And for a few seconds, she let herself enjoy it.
Leaving Wuutah—the city of, well, basically, noobs—was fairly straightforward.
The place was massive, and every 45°, a new Imperial Road radiated outward like a spoke. You started in the city of the Emperor-Superior—the Sapa—and the farther you went, the higher-level you were expected to be… and the lower-level the local nobles became.
Eventually, you hit no-man's-land: petty bandit-kings, dragons, trolls. That had been the design. Before the ghouls took everything over.
The Pathfinder's wagon began moving.
The Pathfinder himself—a short, balding man with a big paunch and a voice like a strangled goat—had not impressed Claire. Not with his sincerity, nor with his air of "definitely going to abandon you at the first sign of trouble." If things went wrong, she expected the Pathfinder to become the quest: Rescue the caravan after he flees like a coward.
To that end, she had adopted one of Gordon's otherwise fairly foolish ideas: Rope every cart together.
Now. Why don't you rope all your wagons together?
Because when you turn a corner, one rope goes slack and the other doesn't. That causes slew. Slew means drag, inefficiency, and chaos. Every time you turn, the carts in back get jerked around, the oxen up front have to work harder, and someone gets pulled off their seat.
But Claire had a solution: move slowly, keep the ropes slack, and cluster tightly. That way, she could keep an eye on the Pathfinder, keep the formation tight, and accept the performance penalty.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
Karen clashed her war picks together—clang, clang—the sound tinny and far-off, but still enough to snap Claire's attention backward. A signal.
Claire nodded once. The back cart was about to start.
Good. They remembered. At least someone remembered.
That was the other thing no one told you about roping wagons together: you had to start them in reverse order.
The back cart had to get rolling first. Then the one in front of it. Then the one in front of that. Like winding up a puppet chain from the tail end. Otherwise? Slack tightened violently. Someone snapped a yoke, or a driver went flying.
Claire flicked her wrist, sent a burst of low-heat flarelight into the air—a ripple of orange that meant "go."
Far down the line, the rear oxen lurched forward. Wagon seven creaked into motion.
Then six.
Then five.
All the way forward, her own cart rocked gently as the rope tightened behind it. Not perfect, but better than she expected.
Thank you, Karen.
She wouldn't say it aloud, of course. But it was there.
Claire knew it was a bad system.
You didn't tie wagons together. It was inefficient. It caused slew, drag, and whip-lash jerks every time you turned.
But she wasn't trying to be efficient. She was trying to keep people from running.
The Pathfinder was already giving her that sideways look—the kind of man who'd flee at the first smoke plume. And if the wagons weren't physically connected, someone would get left behind. Someone would wander off to take a leak or fight a boar or flirt with a barmaid, and they'd never get back in time.
Rope solved that. It was slow, ugly, and irritating, but it meant that if anyone tried to peel off, everyone would feel it.
And it gave her a traceable excuse for riding close—near enough to watch every cart, every guard, every ox yoke.
Wagon wheels creaked, axles groaned, oxen huffed, traces slapped, and they were on their way. Very slowly.
One of the main reasons that she was able to trust Karen on a horse—despite Karen not being the best rider—was that the mean speed for the rest of the caravan would be about two miles per hour. Even at a slow walk, a horse prefers to move faster than that.
She settled in. The light was a bit bright. The city of Utah was growing dimmer and darker behind them as they went through the mist-shredded capital biome, and then, in the distance, she saw the first bamboo. They would be going down a mountainside straight into hell.
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Claire had underestimated how easy it would be to be lulled to sleep. The rhythmic rocking of the wagon, the dappled sunlight falling through the bamboo forest now that they were out of the capital... it was hypnotic. Stripes of light worked their way up the wagon, running over her body and, through the cage bars, over the prisoners below. Each of them was shackled, so she wasn't worried they'd reach up and grab her. Still, she felt exposed. She would have much preferred for their cart to be in the middle of the caravan, but it wasn't fortified at all.
Needs must, she grumbled to herself.
"You look uncomfortable," said Harry. He was lounging, his greatsword sheathed and tied down—just in case of questing fingers from beneath. She knew he could get it out fast enough.
"Your armor is protecting you from the cage," she noted.
"I'm padded," he boasted.
She was not.
She was sitting cross-legged on iron bars, wearing nothing but a ceremonial loincloth and a headdress, in the shade of a prison cart, above a dozen men shackled below her.
Loincloths were not meant for this kind of scenario.
Eventually, Claire gave up and leaned sideways—deliberately, carefully—resting against Harry's shoulder.
He tensed for a moment, then relaxed. She didn't say anything about it. He didn't either.
He made for a terrible pillow. All dense muscle and awkward angles and armor plating, with exactly one point of softness—his patience.
Still, she stayed there.
The bamboo forest swayed gently around them. Filtered light striped the cage top in green and gold. Below them, the prisoners murmured quietly, shackled and slouched, oblivious.
"You know," she said, voice low, "this is what the real world looked like."
Harry didn't move.
"When it got bad enough, I mean. Two things had to be true: people had to be desperate, and the powerful had to stop watching."
She adjusted slightly—half to make the words seem offhand, half to get a sharp iron bar out from under her thigh.
"You get two weak victims per capita, and suddenly it's profitable again. Local bandit warlords, rural tyrants, that kind of thing. Safety isn't evenly distributed. If there's a patch where no one with a conscience is looking, people start collecting what's left."
She gestured vaguely down the slope ahead of them.
"This? This is a candy cottage biome. Predictable spawn points, steady newbie flow, and a weak, low-level government. It shouldn't be a good hunting ground, but it is. You'd be an idiot not to prey on it. Which means…"
"Which means," Harry said, "you're predicting something unpleasant just over the next ridge."
Claire gave him a small, pleased smile.
"Unless I was completely wrong, we'll know within the hour."
He sighed.
"But honestly," Claire said, "that's why I think it works."
Harry turned his head slightly. She didn't seem to be talking to him, exactly—just speaking to the forest, or the memory of something.
"When I first got into online games, the scams were everywhere. Like the old 'generosity' play. You find a newbie, offer them a full set of Dark Knight gear. You tell them you're just feeling generous, want to help them out. But then you flip it. You say, 'Hey, just to show good faith, you trade me your valuable item first.' And they do it, because they want the gear and they want to seem trustworthy. Then you just... walk off."
She sounded resigned. Maybe a little amused. But her eyes were hard.
"Oh," Harry said, a little stunned. "You were a scammer?"
Claire shrugged tightly. He still looked shocked. Maybe even a little betrayed.
"I never would've guessed."
She blushed.
"It didn't take me very long to realize that if you do that, everyone hates you and nobody wants to play with you anymore," she admitted.
Then, after a beat:
"It's just... the lesson kind of stuck with me. All you have to do is make it thinkable to hurt other people, and opportunities abound."
"That," Harry said dryly, "would be a terrible choice for a fraternity motto."
"Not gonna become my motto," Claire said quickly. "No no no no no no."
She was still protesting when Karen rode up beside the prisoner cart, looking upset—performatively, if Claire was any judge.
Claire knew that Karen wasn't thrilled about Gordon going to Mars. Knew she definitely wasn't thrilled about him spending a few days with his Martian girlfriend. But the look on Karen's face seemed… sharper than that. More raw. More immediate.
"Claire," Karen said. "I still can't believe you signed us up for a slave-trading operation."
Claire's head whipped around. Her mask came up instantly—blank, startled, defensive.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Slaves," Karen said, enunciating clearly. "We are transporting slaves. I don't like that."
Claire looked down through the iron-barred roof she was sitting on, at the neat rows of shackled men inside the cage wagon.
"Oh," she said.
There was a pause.
"The optics certainly aren't good."
They needed a team meeting.