Aeolus Investigations Set 2: Too Cool To Lose: The Continuing Evolution of Lexi Stevens

by Robert E Colfax

  “Well, whether they’re living, avatars, or sims,” Ron said, “We need to get past these guys in order to get to command-comp’s core.”

  “I know the ship’s layout better than you guys,” Urania began. “It might be time to split our forces. I can climb to the next level up, circle around and come in behind them.”

  “I hate splitting up, but I think you’re right,” Lexi agreed. “Take Geena with you. Ron and I will stay here and winnow out a few if we can. At the least, we can keep them pinned down.”

  As Urania and Geena reentered the maintenance tube, Lexi and Ron fired on the pirates. Much to Lexi’s surprise and consternation, her Zappers failed to pierce the wall separating the rooms. Unable to shoot the pirates through the wall, Ron, taking a chance, dove from cover, firing as he flew through the air, his Zapper discharging through the open hatch continuously. His action paid off as he took out two of the pirates, one of whom had foolishly abandoned his cover to shoot back. Ron felt the burn as a bullet grazed his upper arm and then he was rolling for cover across the opposite side of the room.

  Lexi commed, managing to have concern in her voice even though she was subvocalizing, “You OK, love?”

  “I was hit, but it’s just a scratch. They’re down to six now,” Ron responded.

  Still subvocalizing, Lexi announced for the other’s benefit, “Our hand Zappers are stopped by the material of these walls. Sustained fire might burn through. I haven’t tried it. I’m switching to my assault rifle, Ron,” Lexi said. “Maybe we can get some ricochets going in there.”

  They continued to fire at the remaining pirates, who mostly kept to cover, managing only sporadic return fire. Lexi rued that the power packs for the Zappers, which she designed so they could be set to explode and used as grenades, were far too powerful. Tossing one into the adjoining room into the midst of the Save Me crew would most likely take out a good portion of the ship, including the room she and Ron were in, despite the fact that the amazingly tough walls were resisting Zapper fire. We should stock some real grenades in the armory. Hindsight, but we should have brought flash-bangs with us too. Stupid, I armed us but didn’t expect to have to fight anyone but Meat. Ha! Grenades might have been a good idea for dealing with him, too.

  Urania’s voice came over the comm. “We’ll be in position in ten seconds.”

  Lexi said, “Urania, we need to stock Earth-manufacture grenades in the armory. We also should have brought flash-bangs with us.”

  Urania replied, “Noted. You’re going to survive this, too, Lexi, but yeah, OK, noted.”

  As Urania and Geena found cover in the room beyond the pirates, they began shooting. The remaining pirates, poorly positioned to defend their backs, shifted their attack to this new, more dangerous threat. Lexi switched back to a Zapper.

  As the unexpected assault took its toll on the opposition, Lexi heard a loud thud from behind her. As she began to turn, a massive blow bruised her right hand and sent her Zapper skidding across the floor. She lashed out with all of her strength, kicking Meat in the shin in the French Savate style. It hurt her foot. His left leg, like his right arm, was now a metallic looking prosthetic. Still, the blow was enough to knock him off balance, dropping him to the floor.

  She saw that Ron was unmoving on the floor, crumpled against a wall. She wanted to go to him but could not spare any attention to worry about him. Meat came in fast, grabbing her bruised wrist, whipping her around and delivering a hard blow to her shoulder, dislocating it. Ignoring the pain, she recovered and came back at him.

  Is it because his body is basically Wraixain or has he managed to modify his avatar? He did, after all, seem to be able to blink elsewhere when injured. Urania can’t do that. Despite all of my hard training in multiple disciplines of unarmed combat, his body is absorbing my blows; blows that would have crippled a human, even one as big and strong as Ron. Neither his prosthetic leg nor arm seems to slow him down at all. And he is fast. Faster than I am by a scary margin. Damn it, how do sims think?

  The sounds of gun and Zapper fire continued to come from the next room while she and Meat fought. He yanked the knife she had thrown at him out of his shoulder and tossed it aside. It would have pierced his eye if Lexi’s injured shoulder hadn’t thrown her balance off. She drew her sword left-handed, but he was able to slap it out of her hand before she could bring it into position. He continued to knock her around, playing with her, a cat with a mouse, until bruised and bleeding, one leg broken and her right shoulder severely dislocated, she slumped down the wall to the floor. Struggling, the fight still in her, she pushed herself up and dove for the Zapper only five long feet away. His kick shattered three of her ribs, punctured a lung and sent her flying back into the wall.

  As he leaned over her, he said, “You were the most challenging guest I’ve ever had, far and beyond any of those Wraixain worms who built me.” He smiled while nodding his head, despite his short neck, in a surprisingly human fashion. “With the death of the avatar, the host dies. You’re going to have the privilege now of discovering what comes next. I never will,” Meat said as he plunged the razor-sharp extensions of his prosthetic arm into her stomach.

  “I wouldn’t count on that,” Lexi forced herself to say through the excruciating pain, spraying blood from her mouth as she spoke. Glancing past him, she added, “I can be in two places at the same time.”

  Savoring her pending death while puzzling her last comment, Meat felt a painful sensation in his chest. Glancing down at the two feet of steel blade jutting from between his ribs, he sent himself elsewhere. Lexi-avatar, clad in the gold captain’s tunic Ron and Geena designed for her, squatted down to take the hand of her dying sim. Leaving Urania to make sure the pirates were no longer a concern, Geena rushed in to check on Ron.

  Struggling, blood spreading through her already red tunic, Lexi-sim winked as she held up her left hand in a gesture familiar to any Star Trek fan, her middle and ring fingers spread wide. As the woman’s eyes turned glassy and her breathing stopped, Lexi-avatar wondered what happened to a sim’s consciousness when it died. Was it like watching characters on a TV show and then turning off the set? Those characters didn’t actually exist, except in the minds of the audience, writers and actors. Will I ever know? She reached down and gently closed the lids over her sims unseeing eyes.

  Lexi-avatar looked up as Ron put a hand on her shoulder. She stood and hugged him, asking, “Are you OK?”

  He looked down at the dead, red-shirted Lexi and squeezed Lexi-avatar more tightly. There was a lot of blood on the dead woman. “That is surprisingly difficult to deal with,” he said. He took a deep breath. “You didn’t tell me you woke your sim. I suppose that explains the red shirt. At least I hope you’re the avatar. I thought I was seeing double for a moment. Yes, Captain Lexi Stevens, I have a severe headache and my vision is slightly blurred, but I am mostly functional.”

  As Geena and Urania joined them, both looking from Lexi-red-shirt to Lexi-gold-shirt, Geena asked, her eyebrows raised, “Anyone else here who isn’t who we think she is?”

  “What next?” Ron asked.

  Chapter 16

  Sunday at the Movies

  As they stepped through the hatch that should have led into the room where the pirates had been waiting for them, Ron exclaimed, “Damn, he changed the simulation,” his gaze shifted from the altered surroundings to take in his glowing companions.

  Lexi, as she climbed on and revved a light-cycle, said, “Meat must have picked this up from Urania’s mind, too. He’s getting creative.” They found themselves in a simulation of what had been a popular arcade game in the seventies. A movie based on the game, made in the early eighties, was praised for its groundbreaking visuals and acting. It was followed by a sequel in late twenty-ten. After showing her the original on DVD, her father took nine-year-old Lexi to see the sequel in the theaters. Even at nine, she questioned why they had bothered with a remake.

  They all looked at the glowing grid on the black floor, recreat
ed from the eighties version of a movie they watched together about seven months ago. Urania said, “I didn’t even particularly like this one.” She paused. “If he’s running movies, there’s no telling what all he got from me. At least we have the orange cycles.”

  “Right,” Ron said wryly, as he, too, mounted a light-cycle, “Remember, if you crash into one of the light trails, the game kills you.”

  With a nod to her team, Lexi said, “Be careful, guys. We don’t have any choice here. Let’s do this.” The four light-cycles took off at high speed toward the lone blue cycle in the distance. The rules of the game required them to create a maze using the persistent trails left behind by the cycles, forcing Meat into a position with no options other than crashing into a wall or a light trail, either of which would kill him. Which is what they came here to do.

  The machines were fast and agile, responding to body position as well as to the control shaft. True to the movie, they were limited to just two speeds, extremely fast and even faster. On the heads-up display, the maze they were building was visible in its entirety as was each light cycle’s position on the grid. After only moments, Urania called out, “I think I’m in trouble. I should be better at this, damn it; it’s a freakin’ computer game.”

  “I’m coming,” Ron called out. “I’ll break the trail.” Leaning hard to the right, he pointed his light-cycle toward Urania and the light trail that was about to block her path.

  “No,” Geena yelled into her comm-gear. “Simulation or no, you’re still my son!” She crashed her light-cycle into the trail that was blocking Urania, split seconds ahead of Ron. With Geena’s dissolution, the light trail emanating behind her vanished, opening a range of new possibilities on the grid.

  Ron, anger flashing, began taking crazy chances as he again leaned almost to the ground, cutting his light-cycle in a sharp left before dodging slightly right, all at top speed. Lexi, peripherally seeing what he was doing, altered her course to create an opening for him. Ron, making another insane turn directly toward the wall surrounding the game grid and his own certain dissolution, cut Meat off. Meat blinked out of the game as his blue light-cycle crashed into Ron’s orange trail, ending the game. As all of the light trails instantly vanished, Ron made a sharp left at the last second, avoiding the wall and joined up with Urania and Lexi.

  “I’m sorry, Ron,” Urania said. “I’m not enjoying my dream anymore.”

  “It doesn’t matter, really, does it?” Ron asked, angst in his voice. “Why hasn’t he moved us to another sim?”

  “I’m holding us here,” Lexi stated. “I don’t know how I’m doing it, but I’ve gained some control over the environment.” She pointed her light-cycle toward the gap in the wall at one end of the game grid. As the three light-cycles exited the grid, she said, “I’m taking us to the hangar deck. Think you guys can fly an X-wing?”

  ***

  As the hefty machines sped toward the main hangar deck, Lexi said, “While you guys were fighting sim-pirates, I found the computer core. It’s protected by hull plating. Our hand Zappers won’t cut through it. I don’t think we’ll be able to get at the core at all.”

  “If you’re now controlling the sim, Lexi, why put us in Star Wars?” Urania commed.

  “If we can’t attack the core, I think the only way to get out of this nightmare is to kill Meat’s avatar. I wanted to put him in an unfamiliar setting. After the last movie, it was the first thing that came to mind.” She grunted. “Not that there’s any connection between the two.”

  “Cool,” was Ron’s sole contribution to the conversation.

  “I also discovered why the derelict is just sitting in hyper,” Lexi continued. “The circuitry controlling one of his hyper-generators has been sabotaged to the extent that it can’t be shut off. Gravity, without significant repairs to the control circuitry, is also permanently on. It looks like the crew may have also messed with the environment controls so he couldn’t asphyxiate them.”

  “So he blows himself up if he tries to move,” Urania commented.

  “Sounds as though his crew came up with a plan to disable him before he got to them. Hurray for them,” Ron said. “The last thing the Accord needs is this hulk marauding through space.”

  As the light cycles raced onto the hangar deck toward the row of waiting X-wing fighters, they watched a lone ship exiting through the force field sealing in the atmosphere. Quickly climbing into and powering up their fighters they took off in pursuit. It wasn’t so much that the controls were simple. They matched those of the video game both Ron and Lexi had played while on Earth.

  They sighted Meat’s TIE fighter headed toward Urania-sim-ship. Meat, once he noticed them coming up behind him, realized he could be in trouble. He was clumsy with these controls and knew it. The human-sized ship did not readily accommodate his bulk and the positions of the controls were difficult with his long arms. His prosthetic was great for stabbing other avatars but realistically could use some enhancement in terms of manual dexterity. As incoming fire from the three smaller craft began to lash at him, he abandoned his notion to destroy the sim-ship and diverted course to dodge around the bulk of the enormous green ship.

  As Lexi’s team pursued him, she commed Ron, “If you spot any thermal exhaust shafts, lob a couple of photon torpedoes down them for me, hon.”

  “Roger, Captain. What will that do?” Ron asked.

  “Probably nothing,” Lexi admitted. “Just being true to the simulation. So who knows? Might detonate the ship. That should be a good thing if it takes out the core.”

  They momentarily lost track of Meat while he was dodging in and around the ship’s damaged fin. He sprang into range at high speed, weapons firing at Ron’s X-wing before again looping around behind the sheltering structure.

  “How badly are you hit Ron?” Lexi asked, noting atmosphere streaming from the tumbling fighter.

  “It’s not good, kiddo,” Ron reported while struggling to regain control of his fighter. “Navigation is marginal. The R2 unit is chirping gibberish at me. I don’t speak droid so I’m not sure what his problem is. It looks like I’m going to lose one of the thrusters, though.”

  “Drop out, Ron. Head back to the ship. There’s nothing more that you can do out here.”

  “Yeah, I think I’m out of it,” he agreed. “I’m not in love with abandoning our two avatars, thought.” Turning the crippled craft back toward the derelict’s hangar deck, he added ruefully, “You know I can’t help myself. I’ve got to say it. May the force be with you.”

  Lexi chuckled while thinking about turning off her targeting computer, unsure of what the effects would be. It worked for Luke. The small comp was deadly accurate, but stubborn about having a hard target lock before firing. Deciding on the more flexible tactic, she reached forward and took manual control of her weapons.

  Up ahead of her, Meat had again swung his fighter out from cover and was creeping up on Urania-avatar’s tail. Lexi increased her speed to the maximum her small craft was capable of. The X-wing began to shake. At this velocity the effectiveness of the inertial balancers was becoming sporadic, forcing her back into her seat, making it more difficult to breathe. She watched as Urania pulled her fighter up sharply, simultaneously performing a barrel roll maneuver, catching Meat off guard.

  Meat continued his relentless pursuit. Either because he got caught up in the excitement of the sim, or was just plain stupid, he focused solely on his target, failing to pay attention to Lexi. As her fighter roared into range she fired. Fighting against her overstressed ship, her accuracy left something to be desired. I guess I am using the force; the targeting comp wouldn’t have permitted firing at all under these conditions. Her shots blasted away the TIE’s starboard wing, not the pilot’s compartment as she intended. The damage sent Meat’s now crippled ship spiraling toward the immense surface of the derelict. She had no doubt Meat went wherever it was he went when injured before the small tie-fighter impacted the hull. “Ron, I got him but didn’t kill him. Urani
a, I’ll meet you on the hangar deck. We’re going to Silverado.”

  Ron was waiting for them as they set down gently on the hangar deck. He strode over and wrapped both women into a tight hug. “Damn, that one was fun.” He thought of Geena, and added, “At least it would have been if it wasn’t so serious.”

  ***

  Lexi stood on a dusty, dirt street in front of Silverado’s rustic Evening Star. The sign on the front of the building simply read ‘Saloon.’ She supposed it was probably the only one in the small frontier town. Too bad we can’t vacation here. This is like one of those Old West resorts on steroids. Under other circumstances, I’d enjoy visiting here. Geena would too.

  Her attention was focused down the street on the incongruously garbed alien who was looking around with some amusement. He has the same barrel chest as Brian Dennehy. Maybe that’s why I brought us to Silverado. Then again, maybe it was because I get to be Paden, the Kevin Kline character.