Star Divers- Dungeons of Bane

by Stephen Landry

  So far I was lucky. The Arachnid hadn’t spotted me. It likely had a health close to two-three thousand. Five thousand if it was a queen. Guess it was a good thing Damien had told me to build my stealth level up as much as possible and also a good thing I wasn’t wearing any bulky, loud armour. If I got a critical hit with my first shot my stealth would double the impact. I could probably knock a few hundred HP off in one or two attacks. Worst case scenario I was glad for what I had on. The black mesh I was wearing was an Environmental Protection Suit. It would heat up in cold temperatures, cool down in heat, even create a small shield around me for a second if something tried to fire at me. The shield had a cool down of 5 seconds but most of the time that would be enough to get a clean shot off at whatever was trying to kill me. The suit was also capable of helping me survive in the vacuum of space for 2 minutes and 30 seconds exactly.

  I drew my rifle and aimed but couldn’t stop shaking.

  So much for being capable.

  I couldn’t get a clean shot.

  I could feel something was amiss.

  The Arachnid turned towards me and I felt paralyzed.

  Nel had a small handgun attachment and fired.

  The Arachnid took five points of damage but that hardly mattered.

  ‘Shall we retreat back to the shuttle now?’

  ‘No!’ I was more determined than ever to retrieve the artefact.

  ‘Our odds of survival are now two million three hundred and ten thousand to one, and let me add that if you break me the corporation will be very upset with you.’

  I thought about telling Nel to shut up but that wouldn’t have mattered. The Arachnid was already moving towards us. I charged my shot and fired at what was probably an eye, watching closely as the creature’s health dropped. I could make a quick guess based on the impact of my shot. I had hit it in a critical area. Encouragingly, the creature’s health dropped by about a quarter. Charged shots tripled my rifle’s damage, but I had to wait another ten seconds before firing; alternatively I could switch to rapid fire and try and take the Arachnid down quickly using small bursts.

  Click. I changed the mode on my rifle and fired three small bursts of energy at the spider. Barely a scratch. I prepared myself for its incoming attack as Nel rushed front of me to knock the creature backwards. I rolled to get an angle and fired again, switching back to charged shots.

  For five minutes we danced. The Arachnid stabbing down at me with sharp points at the end of long ebony limbs and me dodging what were undoubtedly fatal attacks. I could see the red stain on one of the legs where it had killed the player character. Every time, no matter the whether the odds were for or against me it didn’t matter. Knowing what was at stake, the fact I could lose my entire progression, years of work. I was afraid yes, Sad for the player that died yes but focused on myself, my own survival. That fear, floating anxiety, every time I faced down a creature, if I wanted to survive I had to let loose and focus on combat.

  As often as I safely could, I fired back and the spider grew weaker, until Nel got the final shot: a critical shot on the Arachnid’s abdomen. I was rewarded with half the EXP.

  ‘Almost level thirty-one,’ I said proudly looking at the corpse of the Arachnid, studying it, hoping maybe it had dropped some extra loot. Nothing. I moved back towards my main objective.

  Laying on the ground beside the dead astronaut was an artefact weapon disguised as an M1 Garand, a World War II service rifle used by American soldiers. I picked it up and looked it over. I recognized the weapon as my father had a replica of one that he kept on display in his office. My great-great-grandfather had served in the Second World War. My father would tell me it was important that we honoured our past as we looked towards a brighter future. It would have been nicer had the world not started falling apart earlier.

  A number of lines had been etched onto the side of the rifle along with a pair of eyes scratched just along the barrel.

  ‘Almost don’t want to sell it,’ I said, slinging the artefact over my shoulder.

  ‘Sir, we have a situation,’ Nel said.

  ‘What now? We’ve got the artefact.’

  ‘We are entering the point of no return, the Lockhead’s hull is starting to fracture and in less than fifteen minutes the atmosphere inside the ship will no longer be hospitable.’

  ‘Okay, that is a problem, can you get us out of here?’

  ‘No sir, we’re going to have to steer the starship away from Alpha Centauri’s orbit or we will collapse under the star’s gravity,’ I had the feeling that Nel was smiling, or at least looking to tell me ‘I told you so,’ to some extent.

  ‘Lead me to the bridge control,’ I ordered.

  Two minutes later I was standing in front of a holographic interface.

  HACK

  60% Chance success.

  I drew a circle with my hand and activated one of the few abilities I had. I could see a pattern of numbers before me. Another sixty seconds and I had control of the ship.

  ‘Twelve minutes until death,’ Nel said floating behind me.

  ‘You could help, you’re a machine: can’t you just talk to the Lockhead?’

  ‘Negative, Lockhead uses old technology that is incompatible with AI,’ Nel answered.

  ‘Fine, fine, I got this,’ I felt calm and placed my hands on the controls, slowly turning the gigantic starship to the left...

  ‘Other way,’ said Nel.

  I began turning the controls back towards the right, firing the ship’s boosters and burning up what power was left in the ion drive.

  ‘Sir, we have an incoming message,’ said Nel.

  ‘Not now!’ I shouted trying to concentrate on steering the two of us to safety.

  ‘Sir, it is a message from Damien.’

  ‘I’ll call him after we aren’t falling into a star.’

  ‘Sir, the message is marked urgent,’

  ‘Nel, calculate the odds of our survival should I stop what I’m doing to read my messages,’ I was studying our position through a holographic display as we slowly began to spin away from the star. Nel was silent.

  I let go of the Lockhead’s control.

  ‘That should buy us some time, too bad I can’t salvage the whole ship,’ I said looking towards Nel.

  Nel was silent.

  ‘Nel, let’s head back to the shuttle for extraction. We’ll store the artefact and head back to the Spire. I need to logout to eat some dinner, please don’t tell any of the others about what we found.’

  Nel was silent.

  ‘Call the shuttle to meet us at the closest airlock. Nel?’

  Nel’s silence broke…

  ‘Damien is dead.’

  2.

  The Spire

  Location: Alpha -1 Star System

  Environment: Three hospitable worlds

  Resources: Iron Ore, Gold, Oxygen, Merchants Guild, Bank

  Quick Lore

  Alpha-1 is located near the Kettle Nebula inside the Serpent Cloud and has three hospitable worlds (Apus, Orithyia, and Lyra) with small settlements. Each settlement is run by a mayor and owned by different players or companies. The Corpse Divers have a hub on Apus where their cruiser, the Ibanez, floats in orbit.

  — Quest —

  Funeral for a Friend

  Expected Difficulty: None

  Rewards: None

  The walk back to the shuttle was silent. Neither Nel nor I said a word to one another as I strapped myself in and programmed a course back to the planet Apus where the other Corpse Divers would be waiting for me. I already had a call from Cass asking me where the hell I had been. I lied and said I went to explore Alpha-3 Euthenia in quadrant 2, a low-level dungeon where newer players went to grind. When I first started it was a requirement to spend several days a week levelling up your character and traversing different environments. In the beginning it was a blast. The game world felt fluid and the enemies were overwhelming. Each kill was a rush. I can still remember having chills the first time I slayed a Wra
ith boss. I would have to hack the shuttle’s navigation and history before I logged out but that was easy. Hacking was one of the few skills I had that I was actually good at.

  It would be another twenty minutes before the shuttle was close to Apus in Alpha-1…I had to speak to Damien. Nel had to be lying.

  Logout

  There was no one waiting for me outside my pod. No interns, no doctors, not even security marching up and down the halls. I unstrapped myself and pushed my headgear to the side. ‘How did Damien die?’ I wondered aloud, standing up, ready to ask him where it was he had gotten himself killed.

  Next to me was an empty pod with a ‘Do Not Use’ sign taped on the front of it. I walked down the hall. I felt alone as I felt the cold air brush against my cheeks. I was wearing normal clothes…a graphic tee and some cargo pants. Nothing warm, even though the weather outside was changing. Anyway, Keen Industries were supposed to deliver me a jacket with their logo, so I didn’t see the point in buying anything new. Each of us were given what we needed and even assigned specific pods to use. They were ours, paid for by the corporation as another incentive for us to hand over everything we found in the game. Technically they didn’t have to pay for us to have our own pods but as much as they made selling artefacts it was cheaper for them than having players not able to login from broken dives at home.

  Damien played for the love of the game. He didn’t need it like I did. He had a loving family, a home to go back to while I stayed in the shelter at the complex with several of the others, sleeping on a dirty cot. Sometimes I crashed at his place. He had his own personal pod too…maybe he had stayed home. Corporate were always doing maintenance on the pods, so maybe he had tried to come to work and couldn’t. No. It was rare if ever he would use his pod at home for anything other than personal gaming.

  As I continued to wander through the complex my mind began to fill with terrible ideas. Nel couldn’t have been serious. Damien couldn’t be dead. Not really. He was already level 52 and had just purchased his own personal fighter with a bonus he made during Operation Two to Tango.

  ‘SIR!’ I yelled, finally spotting someone.

  ‘Kid? What are you doing wandering around here?’ said the attendant. It was a security officer. I could see he had a small firearm attached to his hip and he was wearing a bulletproof jacket over a t-shirt and name tag.

  ‘Do you know if Damien Walker came in today?’ I asked.

  The security officer looked at me and down at the floor. ‘You’re on his team aren’t you,’ he said at last. His eyes looked hollow.

  ‘Yes sir, I’m a Corpse Diver, zeta-one-nine,’ I told him my in-game profession and call sign, as if that would mean something to him.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ the officer said, ‘it was heart failure about half an hour ago.’

  You can only imagine my reaction.

  Damien was gone.

  My best friend’s funeral was held a few days later. His mother blamed the game: calling for a ban on the pods. Damien wasn’t the first to experience heart failure while playing during a full dive and he wouldn’t be the last. Sometimes even with pain dampeners set on the lowest setting and the game’s feature that made death feel like a dream there were situations where the user’s body reacted in negative way. All of that was off the record though. Just rumours I had read on the net. Nothing was certain. The doctors said Damien had some kind of undiagnosed heart condition, that it was an accident. There was no way to prove whether the game was actually the cause of death and with millions of players the loss of a few meant nothing. We also all had contracts. Not to mention the game-world was a way of life for many, myself included. Most were grateful for VR. There was less crime and the pods were a turning out to be a beneficial way to measure one’s health.

  Sometimes I don’t know how I keep going. I don’t know why I get up every day. Face my demons. I don’t know how I eat, how I drink, I don’t know how I keep moving forward despite having lost so much in what feels like such little time. I get up. I dive into the game. I lose myself despite no guarantee anything will ever get better. Life moves forward with or without me. At least in some little way I am achieving the impossible. Building my stats, helping my team. I am a part of something bigger than I am. Damien was just like my brother. He was there for me since the beginning and unlike others he never turned his back on me.

  I didn’t speak at his funeral. I wish I had but I couldn’t. I wasn’t family and other than the life we had inside the game we barely saw each other anymore. His parents knew me as the boy from the streets. Not that they looked down on me. They were nice. His father shook my hand, his mother hugged me. They were the first adults who had shown me any kind of care or comfort since I lost my own family. Damien’s father said I looked good in a suit. It was a rental. I had paid for it out of my own pocket using the small allowance I had saved. The sleeves were too short. The only other clothes I owned had been hand-me-downs and graphic tees I borrowed from other members of my guild. I couldn’t think of the right words to say. I ended up standing there in the back beside three other members of our team Cass, Aiden, and Brand. We were the only ones that came…or at least that we recognized. After the funeral, when Damien’s body was being lowered into the ground a woman came up beside me.

  ‘Meet me at the Spire in three hours I have some information to trade,’ she whispered into my ear.

  It had been three days since I logged in.

  Access

  I woke up from stasis inside the shuttle. We were back in Alpha-1 orbiting the planet Apus. The shuttle was already inside the hangar of our main ship, a cruiser called the Ibanez.

  Nel had done exactly as I asked. The artefact was safe. Only now I felt guilty holding it. Cass was suited up by the time I made it through the shuttle door bay. Cass was beautiful. She was a year older than me. Slightly taller than I was with short, bright red hair. Her avatar had pointed, elf-like ears. I think she use to play fantasy games a lot when she was younger. She didn’t look happy to see me as she stood staring at the M1 Garand I had swung over my back.

  ‘Are you trying to get yourself killed!’ she shouted moving closer to me.

  I didn’t say anything as I tried to move past her. Losing Damien was enough.

  ‘We just lost our best pilot, one of our best paladins and you were off running around the edge of the quadrants hustling!’ she continued to shout.

  I wanted to scream, I wanted to shout that I had no idea what Damien was up to or what I could have done to make things different. We were all trying to get by…ALL of us. I’ve always liked exploring and after being stuck for so long in the outside world all I wanted to do was play again. I felt like I could lose myself for days inside the game.

  ‘This was my chance to prove myself,’ I finally said.

  ‘Prove what? Damien, the others, me! We love you like a little brother, we don’t care if you’re running around but you hacked your way into a system that was off limits and almost got yourself killed,’ Cass stopped. She was nearly in tears.

  I glanced over at Nel who seemed to shrug in the air and turn away.

  ‘You hacked her didn’t you,’ I asked.

  ‘Damn straight, I was trying to find out if she knew anything about Damien,’ Cass was crying.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  ‘I can’t stand not knowing what happened, I can’t understand, everyone is treating his death like it was just an accident but there isn’t even an echo…it’s like he didn’t exist,’ she said resting her head against the wall.

  ‘What do you mean there isn’t an echo?’

  ‘There’s nothing. It’s like Damien never played the game, we’ve been searching everywhere. Aiden and Brand have been playing non-stop since it happened.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me this at the funeral?’

  ‘We didn’t want to upset you, we knew the two of you were close. You were more like family than the rest of us,’ Cass sighed.

  I moved closer and placed my arms
around her.

  ‘If his body is out there, we will find it,’ I said, not telling her I was about to grab Nel and hijack another ship, a Frigate, from the hanger and make my way to the Spire.

  Quick Lore

  Starships in Bane are crucial to the gameplay itself. Most starships are system based but the larger ships have to be equipped with quantum drives or STL (space time light drives). The STL drives manipulate dark matter and create a pocket in time around the starship that allows it to traverse light years. It is the only way to travel from one system to next without the use of a warp gate, which are few and far between.

  Class

  Minimum Crew

  Maximum Crew

  Drone

  Small Fighter

  0

  1

  1

  2

  Shuttle

  Escorts

  Scouts

  Interceptors

  1 - 2

  2 - 3

  2 - 3

  1 - 4

  8

  8

  8

  8

  Frigate

  Tanker

  2 - 10

  2 - 10

  20

  20

  Destroyer

  10 - 30

  40 - 100

  Cruiser

  Transport

  20 - 75

  20 - 100

  200

  200 - 250

  Battle Cruiser

  Assault Transport

  Prison Transport

  40 - 100

  50 - 100

  50 - 100

  200 - 300

  200

  300