Crack Shot: Improves the steadiness and accuracy of the user with small arms.
Status: 0/2
“Zero out of two for Crack Shot? Why is it zero?! Shooting is my thing!” Kaiden asked aloud.
“That would probably be why it’s so low. For most people, Crack Shot is zero out of four or five,” Akello responded.
“Wait, so it’s different for everyone?” another initiate asked.
Akello nodded. “The potential of the synapse is limitless. Our scientists, developers, and technicians are always working to improve the system. Perhaps one day, certain areas could be expanded to push your abilities even further. But as it stands now, the Animus downloads your personal information and skill assessments from your EI. It then bases your potential upgrades on your currently cultivated skills and how much it can improve them without things getting…messy. It would be dangerous to increase it beyond the current ability. You should use your points on talents that are underdeveloped or new.”
Kaiden continued to look around the Soldier tree, highlighting another box that had a picture of what appeared to be some sort of automaton with a hole in the chest.
Robotic Termination: Grants user the skill and knowledge to understand the anatomy, weaknesses, and damage points in most robotic units.
Status: 0/3
He moved his hand to the box next to it. This was darker than the other boxes, showing a logo of some four-armed being with a hole in the chest.
Mutant Termination: Grants user the skill and knowledge to understand the anatomy, weaknesses, and damage points in known mutant species.
Status: Undetermined (Locked)
“You know what this is about, Chief?”
“The Animus and Academy staff only know so much about an initiate. So, until you take a course in a particular field, some talents are gonna be locked until they can get a baseline on your abilities in a certain area.”
“Like killing mutants?”
“You ever fought a mutant?”
Kaiden shook his head. “Haven’t had the pleasure, no.”
“Then you don’t know jack shit about them. Maybe you’re an idiot savant and can kill a battalion with a butter knife, but we don’t know, and therefore, it would be better that you don’t simply start jamming info and skills into yourself.”
“How would having new skills be a bad thing?”
“The same reason you don’t keep pumping air into a balloon. It explodes. Without a proper understanding of an initiate’s abilities, a proper path can’t be created. What you are asking to do is take something that requires surgical precision and saying, ‘screw it’ while trying to force everything down with a plunger.”
“So if I were to start choosing random abilities…”
“Depending on what they are, it’s the difference between a badass and a bloody mess.”
“I think I’ll skip that for now.”
“Yeah, good idea.”
“All right, initiates, let’s move on. The trees are now loaded into your EI systems so you can go over them at your leisure. If you have any more questions, you can consult your EI or ask me after we’re done.”
The screens disappeared. Kaiden saw translucent boxes appear around each initiate, darkening after a moment. A box engulfed him, blocking his vision of the others.
“Now comes the fun part—your personal loadout.”
On the darkened wall in front of him, Kaiden saw his reflection. Next to it, a number of options popped onto the screen.
“This is possibly one of the most important options in the early days of your tutelage. What you choose right now is what will be your basic loadout for your training, practice missions, and tests. You will choose your armor, primary weapon, a sidearm, two gadgets, and a melee weapon. Take all the time you need. When you are done, simply confirm your choices, and you will be taken to a testing field. After you’re done there, you can work with your loadout some more or finish up, get debriefed, and de-sync from the Animus for today.”
Kaiden pressed the options for armor, getting choices for a complete set of options to look at each individual piece.
“You have an opinion here, Chief?”
“Not much of a shopper?”
“Didn’t usually have this many options. Actually, I usually didn’t have armor in a fight.”
“Well, in that case, let’s not be stupid with it.” Chief’s avatar disappeared from Kaiden’s side and appeared on the wall. He acted like a mouse cursor hovering over different options.
“You’ll definitely want some, just to be safe, but if you’ve survived this long, that means you gotta be pretty quick. You don’t wanna sacrifice that too much.”
He opened the tab for chest piece and selected a slim model, black-and-grey. Kaiden saw it appear on his chest and could see the fit in his reflection. It felt sturdy but flexible. While it probably couldn’t take heavy damage, it could take a few good hits before busting. It wasn’t that heavy, and he could feel padding on the interior.
Chief quickly whisked through the other options, adding gloves, bracers, shin guards, shoulder pads that also protected the top of his arms, and a belt and back strap to hold his weapons and items.
“How do you feel about a helmet?” Chief asked.
Kaiden mulled it over. It was preferable to a shot to the head, but he didn’t want his vision obscured or anything too heavy. “You got any alternatives?”
“Let’s give this a shot.”
A mask materialized and covered his face from his chin to the top of his brow in a metallic-looking plate. The visor was clean and wide, a long strip that circled his face and gave him a wide range of vision. It looked like it was made of the same material they used in a two-way mirror. He could see his reflection, but he couldn’t see his eyes.
“It’s got a rebreather to recycle air when you’re in situations where your oxygen is obstructed. The visor not only blocks debris but actually wipes away anything that obstructs your vision. The metal plating will help defend against head strikes and small arms fire. The top of your dome is still exposed, but I’ll leave it up to you to not get shot.”
“Doesn’t look too bad, Chief,” Kaiden said appreciatively. “Nice work. Let me have a quick look around before we move on.”
Kaiden flipped quickly through the screens. He found a long black jacket that added extra protection from blades and light ammo and placed it over his armor, completing the look.
“If nothing else, you’ll die looking good.”
“That’s obvious even without the armor. I could wear a sack into battle, and it wouldn’t make a difference,” Kaiden jeered, popping his coat open and stretching. “Guess we’ll have to see when we get into the training field, but I feel pretty good about this.”
“On to weapons then?”
Kaiden nodded, hitting the confirmation button on the armor setting and moving on to the weapons loadout.
“See if you can find that gun I used in the exam—Debonair.”
“On it,” Chief confirmed, scanning quickly through the options in the primary tag before moving onto side arms. He stopped as he hovered over a picture of the pistol. “Got it right here.”
It appeared in Kaiden’s hand, and he looked it over and smiled. If nothing else, he knew he could have more fun with this. “I certainly want this, but I can’t say I have much of an opinion on the other slots…maybe a shotgun or rifle for my primary.”
“You sure you don’t want a machine gun? Makes things a little easier if you run into a hoard.”
“Nah, Debonair’s fire rate is fast enough. Maybe if they let us mod them later, I can fix the overheating problem. See what you can find in shotguns.”
Chief obliged, opening the tab and sifting through the choices. “Looking for anything specific?”
“Quick-fire rate, longer distance…don’t make the grouping too wide.”
“It sounds like you want a shotgun that is a rifle.”
“Well, kind of, I guess. The
most experience I had with a gun that wasn’t a pistol or SMG, was the X7-Eviscerator, a Tera Sovereign model. It wasn’t as powerful as some of the other shotgun models, but its accuracy was second to none, and it packed a punch even at greater distances. It walked the line between the two, so to speak.”
“I follow. Don’t think the Academy has that model on file, but if I had to take a guess, the technicians have probably whipped up something similar.” Chief looked around for a few moments before sailing down the screen and hovering next to a picture of a shotgun somewhat rectangular in shape with a long barrel and stock in a gray color.
“Check this out. Just as I suspected. The boys at the Nexus R&D made this puppy. It’s called the Raptor—lever-action, small spread, it’s primarily plasma-based but has a second chamber for ballistic ammo, and it has a pretty damn long range for a shotgun.”
Kaiden held out his hand as the gun materialized. It was remarkably light and had a solid grip. He pressed the stock to his shoulder and moved around, then nodded his approval when he moved remarkably fast, even when looking down the sights. He wanted to fire to see the kick, but he figured that was best saved for when he wasn’t in an enclosed space.
“Looks good to me. I’ll keep it. Let’s hurry and wrap this up, I wanna put these guns through their paces.”
“I’m with ya there. For the gadgets, I recommend a portable barrier in case you get caught with your pants down and thermal grenade to give you a little something to deal with groups or heavily armored opponents.”
“Good suggestions. I’ll take them. As for the melee weapon, I think a knife is always good.”
“All right, but what kinda knife?” Chief asked, bringing up the page for knives. “You’re looking at different blade designs, different types, and different styles. Got anything to narrow it down?”
“I’ll probably use it to either cut into a device or cut through hardened material more than as a weapon, but combat should always remain an option. Give me a curved blade with either a plasma or igneous blade.”
Chief quickly found an igneous model. The metallic blade was crescent-shaped with a device on the back of the blade near the grip—an ignition trigger, a device that would instantly heat the blade to scalding levels that would allow it to cut through many dense materials.
“I’ll take it,” Kaiden said with confidence.
“That wraps everything up.” Chief disappeared from the screen, reappearing in Kaiden’s vision. “Just confirm everything and we’ll get to try it all out. Cut loose a bit, blow things up, make a day of it.”
“I’m ready.” Kaiden pressed the confirmation button at the top of the screen. The reflection and loadout options disappeared as a countdown began onscreen, starting from five.
When it reached zero, Kaiden saw the world around him fall away, same as before. Just before the darkness surrounded him, he saw pieces of light shoot past him, a new facade forming before him. He could see a battlefield created out of a desolate city and heard various types of gunfire going off and explosions erupting in the distance.
“They started without us,” Kaiden noted in mock disdain, taking the Raptor in his hands and snapping the lever.
“We’ll just say we’re fashionably late.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Kaiden fired his shotgun into a group of advancing enemies, a mixture of droids and mercenaries. His shot tore through the shoulder of one of the mercs and knocked down a droid behind him.
“I am loving this!” He cheered, quickly cycling the lever and firing again. This shot took out two droids at once, a few plasma shots barely missing his head.
“You ain’t gonna love it when you get evaporated in laser fire. Keep moving.” Chief huffed his disapproval.
“Right,” Kaiden acknowledged, firing off two more rounds and sprinting along the wall he was barricaded behind, heading into the dilapidated city.
He continued running deep into the center of the buildings, seeing other initiates battling as he ran by. Goliaths ran around with plasma or Tesla cannons, and panzerjocks rode their fusion rigs into the thick of the fight. Marksmen sniped opponents, and bounty hunters tested out different gadgets and snares. He even saw a few field surgeons and battle angels mending the wounded.
Kaiden eventually came to a stop, looking around and figuring he was probably in what was supposed to be the downtown district of the city. He holstered his Raptor on his back and began walking down the street.
“What are ya doing?”
Kaiden looked at the buildings, noticing the details in the rough surfaces and unique touches such as graffiti and scattered bits of trash. “Just taking a look around. I’m not in a rush.”
“I guess, but don’t you at least wanna keep blasting away? Come on, man, we just started,” Chief whined.
“I think I’ll have plenty to shoot, so just wanted to see the sights. This is way bigger and more detailed than any of the maps I’ve been in so far,” Kaiden said, looking over a mostly destroyed building to see a freeway in the distance beyond the destroyed streets. Close by, the walls were cracked and worn. “It’s impressive. Kinda spooky too.”
Kaiden saw a white scanning line trail over the scene. “It’s based on an actual field of battle. This is supposed to be Melbourne, Australia, back in 2113, during the Garett Gaol Riots. A local gang, The Hanging Tree Dukes, tried busting some of their boys out of the Garrett Gaol Prison Facility. It worked a little too well. Over eighty percent of the inmate population got out. During the chaos, a terrorist organization called The Blake Lake swooped in and only made the situation worse. Took three weeks for the World Council to get everything under control.”
Kaiden scanned the horizon, trying to imagine the fighting. “I vaguely remember one of the guys telling me about that. His dad lived there when he was a kid and watched it all go down. The WC was only just put in place a couple years prior.”
“Not exactly the greatest way to start planetary unity. It’s what launched the United Earth Military proposition.”
“Kinda funny when you think about it. The WC got blamed for not reacting fast enough, yet they somehow got more power by uniting all the countries military forces under their banner.”
“I guess you gotta figure…” Chief’s voice went silent, Kaiden could see his avatar glitch momentarily.
“Chief, you all right?” he asked worriedly.
“Y-y…Yea-ye… Yeah, I’m good. Don’t know what that was about.” Chief’s voice sounded somewhat hazy.
“Well, run a diagnostic or something. You sound like you’re trying to cough up a furball.”
“Yeah, I’ll get right— Oh, shit, enemy incoming.”
Kaiden turned and saw another droid in the distance, staring him down. This one was far bigger than any he had seen in his life—at least fifteen feet tall—and stood on four pointed legs. It had a cone-shaped head with one arm with a three-pronged claw and the other some sort of cannon.
As it pointed the cannon in his direction, Kaiden could see sparks swirling in the barrel. It was a Tesla cannon. That was not good.
He whipped out his barrier quickly, activating it just before the droid fired. He didn’t have time to set it, instead holding it up like a shield as the blast came his way. Lightning slammed into the barrier, and Kaiden was tossed back as the barrier disintegrated. He was knocked down the hill he’d stood on, tumbling to the bottom.
Out of breath, he sat up and coughed from the force of the impact. His visor wiped away the dirt with some sort of light. He stood up and took out the Raptor, snapping the lever as he backed away from the base of the hill.
He could hear the droid charging from atop the hill. Kaiden looked around quickly for refuge. Seeing a half-destroyed multi-level parking lot, he dashed toward it, vaulting over the wall to kneel behind it.
“Good God, this got intense fast.”
“No kidding. Why the hell do they have an Asiton Reaver here?”
“Is that a bad thing?” Kaiden asked, peer
ing carefully over the relative safety of the wall.
“It’s not great,” Chief retorted. “Think for a minute—Asiton? As in Asiton Crisis of 2094? They were the droid models that went haywire and laid waste to a shitload of eastern Europe and China.”
“I’m learning so much today,” Kaiden noted dryly. He saw the killer robot appear at the edge of the hill, it’s spider-like legs bending before it leaped into the air, landing roughly a hundred yards away from him.
“Got any bright ideas?”
“We don’t gotta stay here. This is just practice, remember? Supposed to test out the doodads and skedaddle?”
“What happened to all that enthusiasm?” Kaiden jeered.
“Look, you may not be able to die in here, but pain is still a thing. Plus, I don’t like that little glitch that happened a moment ago. Let’s not forget that.”
“Good point.” Kaiden looked down at his belt and counted three thermal grenades. “Hate to say it, but I’m probably gonna have to give Laurie a house call—after this, that is.”
“You really wanna take this thing on?”
“Like you said, let’s make a day of this,” Kaiden quipped. He fished out a clip of ballistic ammo from his belt, sliding it into the secondary chamber of his gun. “Also, if we make enough smoke, maybe a goliath or panzerjock will come by and lend a hand.”
“If we’re really gonna do this, let me go ahead and activate the Battle Suite,” Chief offered.
“You do you, Chief.”
Kaiden saw the words “Battle Suite Engaged” flash across his display as his vision changed. He seemed to perceive everything more clearly, time felt like it dilated, and all other boxes and info disappeared from his visor, including Chief’s avatar.
“This is the Battle Suite? What does it do?” Kaiden asked, bewildered.
“It’s a unique system for Nexus EIs and their users. They give the EI complete control of all functions in the EI system in order to help their user perform at their peak ability for a short time.”
“There’s a time limit?”
“It takes a lot of juice. Also, it’s not good for the user to do it for too long—bad reactions. What I’m doing with your eyes would take too long to explain, but in short, it’s something akin to an illusion to give you better perception in battle. I’ll show you weak points for the enemy, give strategic advice, monitor physical status, the works. I’ll also give subliminal commands to help you dodge and fire.”
Animus series Boxed Set Page 20