by Dan Thomas
Adrenaline still pumped through Max’s veins as Jaguwar slowed the bike, angling it down toward a small circular-shaped base. Metallic walls surrounded a small compound. Inside was a large, round domed building, surrounded by a few other smaller outbuildings. There were lights dotted around the walls and throughout the buildings as well as small spires that looked like Tesla coils. Max could see some movement within, perhaps robots or automated vehicles moving small crates between buildings.
“Is this yours?” Max looked around at the air shimmering around the bike as they passed over the walls. “Was that a force field?”
“Now you look and sound like an overexcited noob.” Chopsticks’ words were true, and also unhelpful.
“Yes, and yes, Gyromeda is a hostile planet, just like the others. Don’t let the civilization here fool you.” Jag lowered the hoverbike toward the ground, the grass flattening below them as the bike flew low toward a small asphalt landing pad in the middle of the compound. They landed with a small thump. Max had gotten used to the air sweeping over him, tugging at his hair and his clothes. The stillness inside the force field surrounding the base was unnatural. “It’s not only the other players that attack.”
Max peeled himself off the hoverbike and stretched his frozen hands and legs. “That was awesome. But I like being on the ground.”
“Says the guy who rides dinosaurs.” Jag swung his leg over the bike and dismounted. “How’s Charlie doing?”
Max ground his teeth together. “The Ravagers have him.”
“Oh.” Jaguwar grimaced. “I take it that’s the main reason for the infiltration plan?”
“Yep.” The storage compartment opened on the side of the bike and Max took out his sail and the two component cases. “You leave it out here?”
“No.” Jag strode toward one of the buildings, this one a long-rounded construction, made of the same light-absorbing black material as the rest of the base. “Nothing stays outside.”
He stopped a few feet away from the wall of the building, raised his hand and a screen of light appeared in the air in front of him. Jag pressed several controls.
“This is so cool.” Max joined Jag, watching him type a code in. “From the side, it’s like it’s not even there.”
“Yeah. I do love Gyromeda. I know Mythia has magic and Primeva has the dinos, but being able to make stuff, you know, join components together and make something no one has ever made before...” Jag looked over his shoulder. “We should get inside.”
He tapped the screen again and it disappeared. The wall parted down the middle, sliding back to reveal a slope, leading down into a hangar area. Jag’s base was like an iceberg. Not a lot above the surface, but below... “This is a big base for one player.”
Jaguwar gave a short laugh. “Maybe I figured I might be able to persuade you guys to enter the dark side once in a while.” He cocked his head to the side. “Come on, I’ll show you around, then we can take a look at that junk you have in your sack.”
“It’s not all junk,” Max protested.
“Then why are you here?” Jag asked as he strolled toward the entrance. The hoverbike lifted off the ground and drove itself into the hangar. “That’s the AI I was talking about at work.” Jag grinned. “In case you were wondering.”
“I thought you’d brought magic here from Mythia,” Max replied sarcastically.
“Some people think I do have magic in these fingers.” Jag held his hands up and wriggled his fingers. “At least when it comes to building tech. Come on.”
Max walked inside. The hangar was a wide-open space, there were several small vehicles lined up along both sides of a central walkway. Max recognized mining and transporting machinery, and some others he wasn’t familiar with. At the far end of the hangar, there was another blast door, which looked as though it led farther underground. Once the bike glided in, Jag hit a button and the hangar door closed shut, sealing them in.
Max’s ears popped as the pressure seemed to shift. “This place is like a giant coffin.”
“No worse than those blasted mines we used to spend days in. Picks and shovels are not a thing in Gyromeda. Come on, let’s head downstairs.”
Jag led Max down the row of vehicles, which were docked in what appeared to be charging stations. Max glanced at a couple of the consoles, which showed stats for the docked machines, hull integrity, maximum power output, and weight capacity. Jaguwar had been busy.
“How on earth is Jag so advanced here?” Chopsticks seemed to be thinking the same thing. “He’s just one guy, and this isn’t low-tier shit. I don’t know tech too well, but his equipment is advanced.”
Max stayed quiet and kept a poker face as Jag opened the next large door, stepped past two sentry turrets, and took a set of stairs by the side of another large slope downward. A few steps down they came to a smaller side door, which Jag entered a code for, and it popped open.
The room within was a wide space. On the far side were a couple of stacks of tires, a few targets, and a damaged mech of some kind. A weapons rack adorned the wall to their left, and a workbench sat beside a couple of machines on the right.
Jag glanced at Max as he looked around. “This is the playroom.” He grabbed a blaster gun off a rack and aimed it at a stack of tires in the corner of the hangar. With a flick of his wrist, he let off a sonic boom that sent the tires flying into the air, bouncing around the far side of the room. “Not so bad, eh?” He held the gun between his hands for Max to see the small weapon, adorned with switches, a dial, and a power meter. “You should take one of these back to Primeva.”
Max nodded, a grin on his face. “That’s pretty damn cool, I’ll give you that. I don’t know how useful it would be in another world, though.”
Jag spun the gun around his finger before placing it back on the rack. As if magnetized, it stuck to the backlit wall. “It might not be as effective, but you could certainly blow someone to bits with it.”
“It might blow up in our faces instead,” Max said as Jag headed for a concealed door at the back of the hangar.
“Don’t you trust my weaponry?” Jag asked, opening the door.
“It’s not your weaponry.” He followed Jag down a spiral staircase. “Have you ever heard of stuff malfunctioning? You know, certain items from other worlds not working as they’re supposed to?”
“Well, sure, I mean power sources don’t mix well. That’s common knowledge. You can take a laser gun to Primeva, but it would die quickly because there’s no way to recharge it.” Jag turned down another corridor, heading for a room at the end of it.
Max shrugged. “I heard they can malfunction, sometimes with deadly consequences. I thought I’d pass it on.”
Jag rubbed his chin. “It has happened. You’ve got to remember that while our characters are fine going from world to world, each has a completely different environment. Think about it, Primeva’s going to be simulating the high CO2 of the prehistoric world, the ocean world of Junket is going to have high humidity, lots of salt in the air. I’d imagine that any faults in an item taken across worlds are just going to be amplified, an unstable weapon here would be even more dangerous on another world.” He tapped a control panel to open the door and gave a wicked grin. “Maybe send a care package with all my failed weapons over to the Ravagers, give them a taste of playing scummy.”
“Now can you see why we’re planning on taking them out?” They walked into what was clearly a workshop, tools and spare parts littering the floor and work surfaces.
“Sure, I can. Maybe I’ll come help you.” Jag didn’t sound sincere and Max let it go.
“This is amazing since you’ve only been on Gyromeda for a couple of months.”
“I buried my head in working and building this place, I’ve managed to make a stable income repairing and selling tools and parts.”
Max raised an eyebrow. “So you’re a full-timer now?”
Jag held up his hands. “That was the dream, wasn’t it? This is my lair.” Jag went to a wo
rkbench and patted it. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”
Max dumped the case and the sail on the table and unknotted it, spreading out the contents. Jag frowned and sifted through the items.
“Oh, and there’s this.” Max dug the Concealer out of his pocket and held it out.
Jag’s hand shot out and his fingers curled around the Concealer. “I have been trying to get my hands on one of these for months.”
“A Concealer? Why?” Max asked. “And out of all the stuff I have here, that’s the one thing I need. So I can’t leave it here with you.”
“I wasn’t thinking of you leaving it here.” Jag went to another section of his workbench. “Light. Beam. Narrower.” A beam of light shot out of a lamp. It changed shape depending on Jag’s instructions as he turned over the little piece of circuitry.
“That is so cool,” Chopsticks said into Max’s earpiece.
Max muted the game. “Thought you’d lose interest when there’s no dinos around,” Max told him.
“No, still here.” Chopsticks crunched his way through another bag of chips while slurping one of the cans of beer. “Want something?”
“No, I’m good.” Max leaned forward and watched over Jag’s shoulder. He had a little screwdriver between his fingers, working at taking apart the Concealer, which was held between a vice that resembled mechanical fingers. Max turned away and looked over the electrical and mechanical parts spread out over the bench. “I have no idea what most of this stuff is.”
“Maybe once we take down the Ravagers, we should visit Gyromeda for a while,” Sam suggested.
“What? We’re going to risk it all getting our stuff back from the Ravagers and then just leave it behind?” Chopsticks nearly choked on his drink.
“Maybe we’ll leave you behind to look after them,” Sam retorted, and Max switched them to mute while they had one of their lengthy disagreements.
“How is everyone?” Jag asked without looking away from his work.
“Same old, same old.” Max moved to stand next to Jag’s seat to get a better view. “Can you fix it?”
“Yeah, there wasn’t much wrong with it aside from a corroded power source, which is this thing.” Jag pointed the pair of tweezers he was holding at a small dull cylinder on the table. “And it needed a couple of new wave chips, which is what it uses to bend light around whatever needs hiding.”
“It seems such a simple little bit of circuitry to be causing all the trouble that gets reported,” Max said.
Jag picked up the Concealer, holding it gently between finger and thumb. “You’d be surprised how difficult these are to come by. You need some specific Traits, resources, and tools to make one. All while avoiding anyone finding out. You were lucky this one was in good condition. Whoever threw this away either didn’t know what it was or did and didn’t want anything to do with it.” Jag placed it back down on the bench, then grabbed the gun Max had brought. “This looks like a pulse laser.” He flipped a switch on the side of the handle, and a small set of lights on the grip turned on. He pointed it at a target against the wall and pulled the trigger. There was a loud buzzing, but nothing else happened.
“How broken is it?” Max asked.
Jag turned the blaster over in his hands. “Not very. That sounds like the firing coil’s damaged.”
“I don’t suppose you’ve got a spare?” Max liked the thought of having a laser gun when he returned to Primeva.
“There should be a couple in those component kits you picked up. They’re pretty low-tier weapon parts.” Jag grabbed the metal case and pulled it toward him. He then pressed a button, and the lid popped open. The inside of the case was separated into different compartments, each filled with various wires, small metal slivers, little pipes, and other paraphernalia.
Jag took his time sifting through the components, picking out a couple of items, and placing them to the side.
After a minute of this, Jag pushed the component case to one side, grabbing the laser blaster again. “Have you worked much with tech tools?” he asked.
Max shook his head. “Only basic stuff, I couldn’t really get into building modules and then putting them all together. It was all a bit complicated for me. And that was on my other character as well.”
“No worries. I know you don’t have any Traits for this world, but I’ll run through it quickly, you might find it useful to know how to take stuff apart at some point.” Jag looked up to the tool shelf above him and picked out a little pry bar. “So, this being a simple gun, it’s pretty easy to take apart, see this slider here?” Jag pointed to a small indent underneath the barrel. “Press that down, slide it back and it clicks. Take a lever.” Jag slid the pry bar into the gap that had appeared running from the handle to the end of the barrel, and with a bit of effort, the top of the barrel popped off. Jag put it to one side, then pulled the bottom half of the barrel off the handle. “Voila. The trick to seeing how a tool is taken apart is to look for the seams where each part is connected. So, this gun is made up of three parts, the handle, the primary frame, which is the bottom part that makes up the barrel, and the secondary frame, the top part with the sights on.”
Max stared blankly at the disassembled gun. “This already sounds complicated.”
“It’s really not. Don’t worry. So, a simple gun, three parts, each will have different components in. So, the handle, yeah, look, the handle usually has the battery in it, like this one.” Jag slid out a black box from the handle and showed Max before putting it back in. “We know that’s working fine because the gun turns on.”
“So, we’re looking for a firing mechanism, right? The firing coil sounds like the part that...shoots the lasers?” Max pinched the bridge of his nose. This wasn’t his forte.
“Hm. You’re not far off.” Jag picked up the primary frame, the bottom half of the barrel. He replaced the pry bar with a screwdriver tool. “Look here at the back of the frame, this is where it would attach to the grip, and where a lot of the electrical parts are. You can actually see the coil here.” Jag pointed to a little wound piece of wire which was set into the back of the frame. He took the tool, gently placed it against the coil, and with a click, it came loose into his hand.
“That’s pretty fried,” Max said when he saw the corroded piece of metal.
“You could say that.” Jag tossed the coil away, picked up the new coil he had found in one of the kits, and slotted it into place. With a click, it stayed. “And there we go, easy as that.”
“That’s not so bad, I guess, but you’re also talking to the guy that bashes rocks together and calls that crafting.” Max chuckled.
“This isn’t much different, it’s not a system designed to be difficult, it just takes some getting used to,” Jag said as he began putting the blaster back together.
“So, is this what you did when you made TOD?”
“Yeah, it was a bit more complicated, and took a lot of time finding all of the parts and modules, but it wasn’t far off.” With one last click, Jag fit the whole barrel back on the handle. “And there we go, all fixed up, just gotta test it now.”
“Nice!” Max looked to where Jag had piled the rest of his stuff that the Tech Trader hadn’t bought. “What about the rest of it?”
Jag sighed as he looked to the pile. “I’ll be honest with you, Holic, most of this stuff is crap.” He reached over and grabbed another gun from the pile. “We could fix this up, it would pack a punch and shouldn’t blow up in your face, but it’s in a bad state. The rest of it isn’t worth my time.” He then swung round on his chair to face Max. “Are you sure this is worth your time?”
By this, Jag meant the noob suit Max was wearing.
“It is. I don’t know if the Ravagers have some kind of smuggling going on that they’re using to beat us, and other Crews, but we can’t let them keep getting away with it.” Max looked down at the basic clothes his character wore. “Sure, it’s gonna be tough. It’s like going back to school and learning stuff you’ve already spent w
eeks and months learning. But it’ll be worth it.”
“You think they’re gaming the system?” Jag asked, studying the pile of what he called scrap.
Max nodded. “I think they’ve got to be. This isn’t the first time they’ve caught us out, and you know how careful we usually are, Jag. They’ve either got some shady deal with someone who’s supplying them with resources, or they’re smuggling, or I don’t know, but they’ve got to be doing something.”
“Hm.” Jag slowly looked up at Max. “They’ve always done us dirty but taking all your gear like that is pretty low.” Jag held Max in his gaze for a moment. “But are you sure you want to get mixed up in whatever they’ve got going on?”
“They don’t care what they do. All they care about is beating everyone else any way they can. They can’t compete with the big Crews and alliances, but they’ll do anything to get the upper hand on anyone else.” Max picked up the Concealer and inspected it. “So why shouldn’t we do the same?”
Jag looked thoughtful for a moment before speaking. “I’ll help you out how I can, I’ve got a few things lying around that I might be able to send back with you. Nothing fancy, but maybe a laser miner that could get you started on resources. I’d just have to make some modifications to it so that it’ll work on Primeva if you have the time. Maybe I could even gut the mapping program I wrote and interface it with TOD...does she still have him?”
“Yeah, yeah, she still has TOD, and we still tease her about it.” Max chuckled.
Jag gave a wry smile. “I’m glad. Sorry that there’s not much more I can do, but I’ve gotta lot of heat on me right now, otherwise I’d happily hop worlds and help out.”
“It’s no worries, anything you can do is great. All we want to do is get a look inside their base. We need something to give us the upper hand.” Max ground his fist into his hand. “They need to be taught a lesson.”
“And you guys want to be the teachers...” Jag wheeled his chair across to a console to the side of his bench, where an amber light started to flash. “Crap.”