Chapter 12

“I’ve got 6 investors willing to put up 2.5 million each to form this new company. It’ll be a brokerage which is going to treat Silver as a currency, pushing its way into purchasing from small-end Hunters, as well as selling to high-end Hunters. We’ll basically be middleman and clearing house also. We are buying at a fixed $425 per piece, with a per-transaction fee of $50. That should be a good starting point. Did you want to buy in? There are still 5 million dollars worth of shares available to be purchased, and we could take it in Silver if you have it ... in all honesty we could use the Silver since we need a float.” Dave had caught me flat-footed, and I just gaped into the phone. “Leslie? Les, you still there?”

“Um yeah, sorry we only talked about this last night ... you’ve been gone for about 3 hours and all this is suddenly happening? What’s that all about?” I stammered into my cell.

“Chuck (Penderson, I’d guess) had already been on the lookout to get into this market. When I called him he had Grace (Torres, his banker) and Sandra (Fields, another international banker) in his office hashing out ideas. I just happened to walk in with a good one and they jumped on it. They’re offering me 2% just to sit on the Board. Are you in? Have you got anyone else who’d be interested with Game Silver to spend?” He rushed. He wasn’t usually this excitable, but I guess he did have a good night last night, so he may be a bit more chipper than normal.

“I’m in. It’ll be small, I have only about 150 pieces of silver available right now, but I have one really good other investor you might want, in fact you may also wish to tie in Vivideo ... she’s making content for them ... us ... whateve. They’re currently trying to set up a resale arm for the stuff she’s identifying in the show that the owners don’t want or can’t use. She was going to be our means of getting our hands on those items for ourselves.” I replied, having a chance to make the connection.

“Your partner for the drunk scoop-top-boob-shot videos you make about Portal Diving? I’ve seen a few, they’re hilarious.” Dave had obviously paid more attention to his investments (or maybe just me) than I gave him credit for. “Set it up, take all the time you need, just have her ready to sign investment papers in my office on Monday morning ... no, scratch that, Monday is full. Let’s go for Sunday afternoon. I’ll get Vivideo onboard; if they’ve made any headway on the sales then we’ll offer a discount.” He was muttering to himself in full swing here, I decided a full retreat was in order.

“I’m diving with her Saturday; we’ll chat about it. Can I tie in some people to sell us Silver? This group we are running with is only about getting the cash to support themselves, well except for one maybe.” I figured Jamie was never going to sell his silver for anything so paltry and unimportant as cash...

“Do it. Call me Saturday night when you get out.” he said, as though the Ant portal (level II mark II) was going to be as easy as going to work. I sighed.

Seneca and Ashley would be staying with May and Brian again tonight. The leaves up north had already fallen and after last weekend’s chilly bonfire and crowded sleeping arrangements they opted for the quiet luxury of their Grandparents. Their Judo club had a tournament this weekend that they wanted to attend, and Seneca wanted to practice copying his grandfather’s accent all weekend for his upcoming play rehearsal. Joy. Brian had been here 40 years, but still sounded like he was ‘fresh off the boat’.

I picked up Ruth again and we made the drive with companionable conversation. She mentioned she’d seen our videos. And thought we shouldn’t advertise drinking so blatantly. I mentioned that there were no bottles in the shot, so our glasses could have held anything. (In fact, Vivideo was adamant that nothing that we put in our videos was to be there without the owners giving us permission and paying for the promotion. My own t-shirts were causing them grief, as they were in ‘prime advertising space’ without making them or us a single penny.) We agreed to disagree.

Friday night was mostly quiet, Janet and I talked about the proposition from Dave (off camera) and about our dive tomorrow, as well as the Giant Sword, the Rosary and the Skill Book (on camera). She closed the show with the hope for a safe journey tonight, tomorrow, and always. I ended up wearing my ‘ClosetMonster’ band shirt to bed alone and missing having the company.

The men arrived early, all together in the same van. DeMarcus had some new armor and a haircut. He moved like he was hale and hearty. Jimmy was wearing the same gear he had last week, but they were cleaned and sewn-up with neat stitches where they’d been torn. I wondered if that was his work or someone else’s. Ruth passed on taking out their stitches until after the run. “You never know, some skeleton might just cut them out for me.” she deadpanned, sipping coffee around the empty fire pit. As we all piled into my minivan, she was lifting Sam into a jogging stroller with plans to hike one of the now frozen muddy trails nearby.

The Ant Portal was what we expected for a change (right up until the end, as we were leaving at least). I discovered that my new sharpshooter (Line of Sight) skill took exactly 1 Mana, which was all I had right now. Talk about luck. Due to the nature of Mana regeneration, it meant I had only one of those sniper shots every hour, but I made them count. I tried not to make any that were “miraculous,” just to keep it quiet what I’d managed to do with the Eye that I’d bought for pennies from Jude.

We started immediately in level 2 and had to search around for a while before we found the entrance to the tunnel. After the first three encounters we knew that this wasn’t a swarming colony, the numbers just weren’t there. The crossbow ‘Guards’ Tarl and Jude had the task of looking for colored stones too and ended up finding all six on this particular run.

I’d made mention of finding a buyer that would pay $425 for a piece of Silver and their only comment was an enthusiastic “Yes Please!”

The fights were more ’scripted’ now than they’d been two weeks ago. We’d learned better how we work together, and the Ants just hadn’t the numbers required to injure (let alone subdue) us. The fact that our crossbowmen rarely killed anything was still a little annoying but I was resigned to it by now. They were the Reserve force, there in case anyone collapsed under the pressure of an opponent. Janet and I were joking that our larger shoulders from all this work were just gonna make our shirts look tighter.

I sniped one of the four cave guards and had my Mana recharge in time to kill one of the Kings too. Both of them were perfect eye-shots and instant kills. I was congratulated both times (meaning that the team noticed) but I was going to need to be more careful moving forward if I wanted to keep the fact that I’d absolutely fleeced Jude a secret.

DeMarcus was basically unchanged in his fighting skill, but Jamie had a hell of a time using his mace against the lightly armored ants. Glancing blows didn’t do much, so more and more he resorted to the rusty Sabre that he’d salvaged from the skeletons. It had its own issues though, needing a near-perfect strike to a joint to have any hope of severing a limb or head. The sword itself didn’t break but was looking a bit worse-for-wear by the time we reached the Queens chamber.

I’d cursed the extra weight of the calf-high steel-toed work boots I bought. Lifting this extra weight had been just as tiring as the salesman had said they’d be. All morning I’d felt like I was a 1/4 second slower to respond to the ants. When we neared the end of the tunnels they came into great use with the juvenile Ants though. We stomped them flat, no injuries, quick and easy.

If there was a theme for the day, it would have been ‘no injuries, quick and easy’. Just like a mercenary likes it.

While we looked around and looted the very sparse and empty chamber we discussed the idea of running down to the next level. I was against it and so was everyone but oddly, Jude. “Can we at least keep the possibility of taking it to the third level during our last run? If the next three are as easy as this one was, it might be a decent bet.” he made his point and wasn’t too pushy. I’d grant him the idea of an open mind.

Besides silver, all we found another couple of pieces of ant armor that I’d bet were Vambraces. We’d see on the way out.

Tarl called us back when we were about halfway out of the tunnels.

“Check out this wall, it’s got a different feel to it.” he called up to the group.

We backtracked a ways, the tunnel here was darker as we’d been pulling the glowing stones out as we left.

“It’s when the light changed that I saw it, look, it’s not so smooth, and it’s round, kinda the same size as a tunnel branch would be. Maybe it’s one of those ambush locations, and there’s ants behind it.?” He said, unusually excited.

We pulled our weapons. Jimmy bashed the wall with his mace and the whole thing gave way after only a few seconds.

We hadn’t found an ambush site; we’d found a garbage dump.

It’s sometimes hard to tell experienced cops and soldiers from civilians, or for that matter experienced medical workers from office people.