Session zero haarlocks d.., p.1
Session Zero: Haarlock's Destiny - Book 1, page 1
Copyright © 2023 by J Tyler Pennington.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permission requests, contact Yellow Sign Publishing at yellowsignpublishing@gmail.com.
The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred.
Generative AI was not used in this novel's production.
Cover Art by E.L. Sprocket
Word Count: 99,359
Print ISBN: 978-1-7351166-3-1
eBook ISBN: 978-1-7351166-4-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023912762
1st Edition – 2023
Contents
1. Chapter 1
2. Chapter 2
3. Chapter 3
4. Chapter 4
5. Chapter 5
6. Chapter 6
7. Chapter 7
8. Chapter 8
9. Chapter 9
10. Chapter 10
11. Chapter 11
12. Chapter 12
13. Chapter 13
14. Chapter 14
15. Chapter 15
16. Chapter 16
17. Chapter 17
18. Chapter 18
19. Chapter 19
20. Chapter 20
21. Chapter 21
22. Chapter 22
23. Chapter 23
24. Chapter 24
25. Chapter 25
26. Chapter 26
27. Chapter 27
28. Chapter 28
29. Chapter 29
30. Chapter 30
31. Chapter 31
32. Chapter 32
33. Chapter 33
34. Chapter 34
35. Chapter 35
36. Chapter 36
37. Chapter 37
38. Chapter 38
About the Author
Character Sheets
Further Reading
1
The enemy sentry lit his cigarette.
Winston Haarlock, Delta Force operator turned mercenary, let the man take a few long drags before putting a bullet through his head. Moving the dead man into the tree line, Winston picked up the pack of smokes, lit one himself, then casually walked into the compound. His black fatigues, bullet-proof vest, and boonie hat would blend in nicely with the guerrillas. Now he just had to find the missing girl.
The girl, a French national named Belle, was taken hostage while on spring break in Chile. Her parents, both wealthy entrepreneurs in their own right, owned many properties in the coastal town of La Serena. Belle, while staying at her family’s luxury resort, ran her mouth about how much money she had, and how she could go anywhere and do anything. Local guerrillas decided to see just how rich she actually was.
The guerrillas absconded Belle to their compound deep in the mountains and demanded a hefty sum of $2,000,000. Winston was getting paid $200,000.
Not that he wasn’t being paid well. In fact, Winston just made up a price during the phone call. The idea of a sweltering South American summer wasn’t an incentive to take the job, but twice his normal fee? Hard to pass that up.
Most other mercenaries Winston knew couldn’t believe his low rates. Potential clients couldn’t either. His record proved he wasn’t cheap for lack of success, but for efficiency. What a team of mercenaries would need a week to do, Winston could do in a day.
Ten years in Delta Force honed Winston into a lethal combatant: a proficient sniper, an expert in unarmed combat, and a ghost when he wanted. Winston could blend into a crowd, sneak into a fortified compound, or disappear with little to no trace.
Cigarette in his mouth, Winston mimicked the dead guard, hunching his back and adopting a lazy gait. The dark, moonless night, and the compound’s patchwork lights, would only help to obfuscate him.
The few other guards talked quietly amongst themselves. At 3am, even the most hardened militants found it difficult to stay awake. Especially at night in the mountains, when the cool temperature brought people around warm, cozy heaters.
Passing by another guerrilla, Winston gave a head nod. The more you acted like you should be there, the fewer people paid attention to you. This guy just waved and kept going.
The compound, which wasn’t much more than a dozen sheet metal shacks, covered a handful of acres. Haarlock didn’t have to search each building for Belle. There’s only one reason to post a guard inside a base.
The guard looked bored as he leaned against a wall. His rifle, sitting on top of a stack of crates, was just within reach. Winston stopped twenty feet away and acted like he couldn’t light his cigarette. After three failed attempts, he purposefully dropped the lighter. Cursing, Winston addressed the guard in perfectly accented Spanish.
“Hey, I just dropped my fucking lighter. You got a flashlight or something?”
The man laughed at Winston’s faux misfortune, grabbed his rifle, and walked towards him.
“Bad luck pal, batteries on mine died. Yours too?”
“Yeah. Left it on by accident.” Winston used his foot to find the lighter.
When the guard came close enough, he could see his compatriot was a Caucasian man with a beard. Before the man could react, Winston grabbed the back of his head and shoved a knife into his neck.
Winston ensured no one saw him, then shoulder carried the dead man behind some other crates and hid his body. He fished the door key from the man’s pocket and entered the once guarded building with a suppressed pistol in hand.
Inside, a man sat at a radio desk. Winston killed him with a single round to the head. Waiting to see if the falling body alerted someone, he began a search of the three rooms. The first held supplies and some drugs and the second a bound and blindfolded girl. Making sure there weren’t any surprises behind door #3 (an empty bed), Winston returned to check the girl’s identity.
The girl took a severe beating, bad enough to be unrecognizable. Luckily, other means of identification exist: the fox tattoo on her left hip confirmed Belle’s identity. Winston tried to rouse her, but she was out cold. Track marks on her arm, and heroin on the nearby table, probably meant she would be unconscious for a while.
After two weeks of malnutrition, and being small in the first place, turned Belle into little more than a paperweight. Winston slung her over his shoulder, and with pistol drawn, left the building. All he needed to do was make it the kilometer to his jeep, then the twenty klicks to the docks. A waiting sea-plane would take them both home. Rarely do things work out how they’re supposed to.
Halfway to the exit, Belle woke up.
And started screaming.
Flood lights turned on as a klaxon blared. Two dozen armed, angry guerrillas surrounded Winston. They screamed for him to drop the girl and surrender.
In short order, the commander walked through the circle of men. “Drop the girl and you’ll live.”
Still holding tight to the squirming, shouting Belle, Winston looked around at his predicament. It wasn’t great.
“Please, we both know you’ll kill me as soon as she’s out of harm’s way.”
The commander smirked. “How about we don’t kill you slowly?”
“See, that isn’t a great bargaining chip. How about you let me leave and I won’t kill you?”
The commander laughed, then stepped back to the line of men and elbowed the one on his left. “Shoot his knees.”
As the guerrilla aimed his rifle, a powerful wave of vertigo overtook him. While he puked out his dinner, several more men followed suit. Within seconds, everyone, including Winston and Belle, did the same.
Nausea and confusion washed over Winston. The world spun, his head pounded, and his ears rang.
A booming voice filled the air, seeming to come from everywhere at once.
Integration proceeding on schedule. Time to completion is one minute and forty-five seconds. Please interact with individualized menus before the countdown ends. Failure to select a destination will result in a random selection.
What menu the voice referenced Winston didn’t know. The pain overrode any worry about the disembodied voice. Or menus. Right now, the goal was to escape. Winston just needed to figure out which way was up first.
The voice counted down the last ten seconds and the world went dark.
2
Winston Haarlock jerked awake. He reached for his sidearm, desperately trying to not die by the twenty guerrillas surrounding him.
But there were no guerrillas. Or sidearm.
His head still swimming, Winston looked around to see where the hell he was. Before it was the Chilean mountains. Now it appeared to be a picturesque forest. Chirping birds filled the air, a nearby stream babbled, and the tops of a distant mountain range rose in the distance.
Winston was in a clearing, maybe 200 feet wide, with all the same clothing he wore during the botched rescue. He searched his various pockets, finding little remained. It seemed his pistol was gone, along with his watch, GPS, phone…anything mechanical or electronic. His combat knife sat safely in a chest holster, along with the small med kit on his hip. Weird.
Once again, the booming voice filled the sky.
Unfortunately, you were not randomly selected to change your race.
Your base stats and Skills have been automatically calculated. Your real-world experience has been converted into five (5) levels.
Please select a base class.
Looking at the menu floating in the air in front of him, Winston knew they had killed him. Was it heaven, hell, or some weird purgatory? Either way, it sure felt real. Too real.
The cool breeze made the sweltering sun bearable. The grass gave off a crisp, natural scent, and Winston could see a few bugs buzzing around. He even felt hungry and a little sore.
Turning his attention back to the floating menu, it reminded Winston of an old Windows 98 prompt. The screen possessed four buttons: fighter, mage, rogue, and civilian.
Winston remembered a few pen and paper games that used this class system. He’d been an avid gamer since he was a kid. It didn’t matter what the game was, Winston enjoyed playing it. He even converted a few of his Delta teammates over to geek culture.
The voice boomed again.
Please select a base class.
“Damn, chill.” Winston grimaced at the voice. It was loud.
If this was the afterlife, Winston had never heard of this particular one before. Most religions said you went to either a type of heaven or hell. A few purgatories existed, but those are supposedly places of cleansing, not gaming.
Winston looked around again, still convinced this was some kind of hallucination. Maybe he’d been riddled with bullets by Chilean guerrillas, and his dying brain was firing off whatever synapses it could to stay alive.
Either way, the loud voice had demands. As a military man, Winston listened to loud voices.
But what choice to make? RPG classes, which this seemed to reference, were fairly simple: fighters wore armor and rushed into combat, mages slung spells, and rogues snuck around and stole stuff. Winston didn’t know what the civilian class specialized in.
Winston, much like real life, enjoyed being sneaky. Reaching out, he gingerly pressed the rogue button.
Congratulations on your selection! Would you like to apply all five (5) levels to rogue?
Winston, a purist at heart, rarely multi-class. He pressed yes.
Your five (5) levels have been applied to your rogue class. Your stats have been adjusted accordingly.
You have received the following Class Abilities: Thieves’ Cant, Sneak Attack, Uncanny Dodge.
You have received the following Proficiencies: Lock Picks, Simple Weapons, Sleight of Hand.
Based on your race of Human, you receive two (2) starting Feats. You receive one (1) Feat every five levels. You currently have three (3) Feats to choose.
You receive one (1) Talent every two (2) levels. You currently have two (2) Talents to choose.
Please make your selections.
Winston smiled. He absolutely loved making characters. Especially min-maxed ones.
The menu system was intuitive and informative. Each category contained lists of options, and more than enough information on each to make an informed choice. After experimenting with the interface for a while, and going over the choices and their effects, Winston got the gist of their synergy.
For his Feats, Winston chose Alert, Magic Initiate, and Pass Without Trace. Alert combined with his Uncanny Dodge, allowing him to detect and avoid almost any attack. Magic Initiate gave him access to two cantrips and a 1st level spell, and Pass Without Trace made it so Winston left behind almost no evidence where he’d been.
Last but not least: Talents. Winston selected Canny Observer and Resilient. The ability to notice things more easily, and being harder to kill, seemed like obvious choices.
Congratulations on your selections! You have reached Level 5.
You may pick a class specialization at Level 5. If you do not choose a specialization at this time, you will have the chance every five (5) levels. Would you like to pick your specialization now?
Shrugging, Winston pressed yes. The menu listed several dozen to choose from, with most grayed out. It seemed certain specializations needed additional levels in fighter, mage, or civilian, along with stat, Skill, or Feat requirements. For instance, with three levels in rogue and two in fighter, Bandit would unlock. Three levels in mage and two in rogue made Phantom available. Combining rogue and civilian allowed you to choose Diplomat.
Winston only wanted one specialization: Assassin. It was too cool not to take. Lucky for him, his automatically calculated Skills gave him Daggers: Master and Stealth: Expert. These fulfilled the two fundamental requirements for Assassin.
Congratulations on your selection! You have received the following Class Ability: Chink in Armor.
Character creation is complete! Please enjoy your experience.
The disembodied voice and menu vanished. Winston looked around and wondered what the experience could be. He realized he should have a character sheet. If floating menus existed, why not a floating character sheet?
“Character sheet…display character sheet.” Winston frowned. “Open character sheet?”
As Winston reviewed the data, the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end and a sudden urge to dive to the left overcame him. Winston complied. A massive paw, with equally massive claws, swiped the air where he was just standing. It was a mountain lion.
And not just any mountain lion, a massive one.
Rolling to his feet, Winston entered into a crouch and met eyes with the animal. It slowly paced him, growling while its tail twitched in annoyance.
With his combat knife in hand, Winston rotated with the animal. He couldn’t outrun it. He couldn’t reason with it. The only thing to do was try to kill it and hope to survive. Survival mostly depended on tenacity and determination. Two things he possessed plenty of.
Screaming, Winston rushed the beast.
3
Everything hurt.
That makes sense, especially after 500 lbs. of murder slams into you. The bullet-proof vest Winston wore took the brunt of the force, keeping the razor sharp hind claws of the mountain lion from gutting him. Unfortunately, this shattered the armored insert along with a few of his ribs.
Though his chest and stomach were intact, Winston’s left arm wasn’t so lucky. Four inch teeth sank into his left shoulder as the front claws of the animal sliced into his left forearm. Good thing he was right-handed.
The cat lay dying a few feet away. Winston got lucky and hit an artery in the animal’s neck with the first strike. He was also lucky to survive. But that wouldn’t be the case if he didn’t stop the bleeding. Taking out his med kit, Winston began treating his wounds. He stopped the bleeding and bandaged everything, but those efforts used up what few supplies were in the kit.
He could kick himself. Standing in the middle of a field while oblivious to the world around him. Some spec-ops bad-ass he was. Without Alert and Uncanny Dodge, Winston knew he’d have been cat scat. Resilient probably helped, too.
Winston groaned when he got to his feet, then stood for a moment until the vertigo went away. He walked over and looked at the monstrous feline. The neck wound spurted small quantities of blood. After a few fitful breaths and some twitches, the mountain lion finally died.
Congratulations on your first kill! You have been awarded 250 experience points.
The booming voice startled Winston, causing him to jerk. The waves of pain dropped him to his knees. Several deep breaths and an iron will kept him from passing out.
Fucking voice.
Winston knew he couldn’t stay in this clearing for long. It was doubtful another animal would come along, but better safe than sorry. That, and with the sun beating down on his shoulders, his all black outfit soaked up the heat. He was already thirsty, and water was one of, if not the most, critical resource necessary for survival.
The sounds of a stream came from Winston’s left. He walked that way into the forest and found an idyllic scene just over an embankment. He used his good arm to wash some of the blood off his skin, then he rubbed the cold liquid across the back of his neck and drank his fill.
