Star Divers- Dungeons of Bane

by Stephen Landry

  ...And for that too to be torn down.

  Losing was the beginning. ‘This can’t be happening,’ I yelled out. Nel displayed an image in front of me of the winner. The ship that won belonged to a pilot that went by the name Lappa. His avatar was tall and skinny, decked out with cybernetic arms and spiky purple hair. He had been racing for a group known as the Alpha Centauri Corporation but his avatar’s tattoos etched across silver metal and tan skin displayed red sigils and the bottom of a skull across his chin. They were a dead giveaway as to what organization he really belonged to. Crimson Kings.

  But still not the worst thing happening at the moment.

  The egg, the egg I had been holding onto since discovering it inside the wreckage of the dungeon Lockhead, the egg I had been harboring from the deserts of Rem and all across the jungles and caverns of Maitreya had hatched.

  No Name

  Owner: Breq

  Level 1

  Skills: Unknown

  Mana: 100

  Neutral

  Health: 100

  Stamina: 100

  The creature, whatever it was, had become mine as a new alert in my user interface appeared for just a moment showing the creature’s health, stats, and history. I quickly moved it out of the way, since I had too many other things to concentrate on at the moment but it was there and I could feel it.

  Quick Lore

  Familiars are creatures assigned to players like pets. Unlike pets however Familiars are connected to a player’s life-force and cannot be traded, sold, or killed by players. Familiars are one of the most rare creatures in all of Bane.

  I didn’t mind that the egg had hatched, but it could have happened at a better time. Still, the creature’s big round eyes glimmered with a purple hue that made it hard to stay upset. I’m not going to lie. It was cute. Like a puppy or a kitten with small horns and a long reptilian tail covered in small metallic scales. The creature was some kind of hybrid. Of what I wasn’t sure. I was already waiting to hear Kira say that we had to run a scan on it immediately, that we had uncovered some kind of new and exotic alien life.

  At the moment though I was in over my head. The race was finished but something had gone wrong. Nel told me that the winner was already turning and flying back.

  Three Titans came out of the air. Hundreds of ships detaching themselves and flying out from the sides like wasps around a broken hive. The race was over but we were still running for our lives.

  I commanded the creature to stay still as I turned our fighter around and began heading back towards the forest. I still had a detonator aboard so I couldn’t fly up and over the trees but I could easily go back the way I came. An explosion behind me. I could only hold out hope that the others weren’t waiting for me there. That they had gotten out before any of the chaos. The three Titans had taken out the shipyard and now I was dodging debris falling from the air. Not that it was an issue. Since the beginning of the race I had started to feel like a A+ pilot.

  Once again running for my life, I drifted into the tree line and back down the broken path and into the caves just as Nel began to receive a communication from The Lady of Lani.

  ‘Have.…Key…fast...can,’ it was broken chatter and static. I couldn’t understand but at least I knew they were safe. Kira was safe and that meant I had to have hope. The cave made certain I wouldn’t receive any more of the message. What I heard was impossible to understand besides a few words. Words that would be essential to my getting out of this alive. I asked Nel to find a way to unscramble the message but we were already too deep and in the darkness. I had to give up control of the fighter to Nel, who had mapped a course based on our first run. The Crimson King, first place winner of the race was already coming up behind me. I could see a look of terror on his face. What was it that had him so afraid? My question was answered when Nel told me we were being followed by several FTC fighters, soldiers sent by the Spire itself, special forces division. Nel fed me intel but I could only concentrate on half of it. The three Titans were under command by someone named Nightswan, who was onboard the Galactic Pegasus, which, from what I saw, was almost twice as large as Lady Gray’s own Titan. The two smaller Titans were named Strength of a Devoted Dominion and Yell of the Collapsed respectively.

  All I could think was that they had found me. Somehow, someway, they figured out that it wasn’t me on the camera, tracked us down to this backwater world and now they were here to finish the job. No. That didn’t make sense.

  The small creature stood up on my lap, looking back at the fighters coming after us with a snarl and display of sharp teeth. For a moment I was afraid if I commanded it to sit back down I would be attacked, or worse, the thing would jump out of the ship and make for one of them. I commanded the creature to back down and told it I had control.

  Our survival was all that mattered. The Crimson King began flashing a light behind me, using it to guide me through the tunnels. He was only several yards behind now as I led us back into the jungle.

  A message relayed to me through Nel: it was the winner telling me we had to work together to survive. Before I could respond the Strength of a Devoted Dominion appeared above our heads and he was gone. His fighter destroyed by a railgun. They were aiming down at us now from above. We’d be lucky if they didn’t glass the whole planet.

  My thruster began to overheat again and this time I had no lake to dip it in. I wasn’t going to venture back that way either. I would rather be struck down by a Titan than face the Krakens again. I was the only one left. Several dozen other racers had already turn tail and had started to go back, I could see the Yell of the Collapsed had moved ahead and was picking them off one by one. It wasn’t me they were after. Of course not. The key. The message; the static that covered Kira’s voice. She was trying to tell me something and I just had to figure it out.

  I drifted right this time: instead of flying into the jungle I flew beside it, using the tall trees to shelter myself from the Titan’s line of sight. I thought about stopping but they would be tracking my heat signature and abandoning the ship would mean abandoning Nel, and after all we had been through I couldn’t do that.

  FTC (For the City): a group of soldiers that dedicate their lives to protecting the interests of the Spire and, most importantly, the Chel. Never seen in streams and rarely seen in any day-to-day activities. Many of the FTC lived off world in space colonies and on hellish worlds that were used for their training. I had heard rumours that half of the FTC were actually prisoners or people that had been kidnapped and forced to play the game a certain way. They had no identity. Their armour and masks were all colour-coded based on the terrain. Dozens of FTC divisions existed, including Torture, Crossbow, Paladin, Garrison, Covert, and Chaos. Those were the few I had heard of anyway.

  Damien told me once about how he ran into an FTC officer on a dive not long after he had hit level 50 and it was the first time in the game he had feared another player (besides Lady Gray I’m sure). The FTC officer and Damien were chasing the same echo through the wreckage of a freighter. The freighter had become overrun with Hollows and while Damien was barely holding his own the FTC officer moved at ten times Damien’s speed. Some kind of implant? Mechanical enhancement? No. It was a power given to the soldier by the Chel, some kind of sufficiently advanced tech that looked like magic. Damien gave up the chase and fled.

  Given the attack and hunt that was on, the FTC weren’t going to leave any witnesses this time around. They were known for being scary but this was beyond. Player killers. That was all they were in the end. In the sky above I could see what looked like a silver ship flying around the Strength of a Devoted Dominion and a moment later the entire Titan was descending towards the ground towards me. Nel gave me manual control and I pushed my fighter to the max, ordering the newly hatched creature to stay tucked down as we hit three-G. I could barely move to turn us away from a rock that seemed to appear from the ground.

  The Titan was crashing. Behind me I could hear it tearing the jungle a
part as it turned the ground to cinder. By the time I cleared it, there was ash raining down from the sky above and the silver ship that had taken down the Titan was flying in front of me with its hangar open.

  The silver ship was The Lady of Lani and, said Nel, it had been newly refitted by Lady Gray. Tracking Nel they had pinpointed my location and come as quick as they could, taking out the Titan so that we wouldn’t be destroyed mid-rescue. My friends had saved me again. I smiled and began to slow down, crashing to the ground inside the hangar before several Silvermanes appeared, putting out the fire on my thruster and surrounding me with raised TX-7 assault rifles.

  ‘GUNS DOWN!’ Gorge yelled, ‘he’s a friendly.’

  Slowly, I lowered my hands which had been above my head and the Silvermanes lowered their weapons and began helping me out of the ship. The creature I had been keeping safe jumped up on my shoulder before landing on all four feet on the ground in front of me. The Silvermanes looked at it with curiosity, one of them pointing his rifle at it, ‘he’s with me,’ I smiled removing my mask.

  Location: Hangar

  The Lady of Lani

  Everyone else soon appeared and we were back in the air, flying away from the wrecked Titan and the fighters that were swarming around it like maggots. Moments after we came to a landing at the finish line in Grey Gardens, my entire team ran towards Nel and I. The familiar immediately took to Kira, jumping into her arms and licking her. I prayed its saliva wasn’t poisonous. Given where and how we found the egg anything was possible. We were dealing with something unexplained, unexplored, and as far as I knew totally new to the game.

  ‘It’s a familiar! I never thought I would see one,’ Kira said studying it with some kind of multi-tool device I assume she had been carrying with her for just such an occasion. ‘There is evidence that it shares DNA with Chel!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Are you serious?’ I exclaimed, ‘how is that possible?’

  ‘Remember the dungeon? They were holding a Chel prisoner; now if I had to guess this is some kind of pre-cursor, a proto-chel. Some of the data we uncovered revealed that they were reverse engineering the Chel’s genetic makeup in an attempt to duplicate their powers,’ she showed me a holo filled with research data. I guess I knew where her free time had been going.

  ‘I still don’t understand? Why does it look like a fox?’

  ‘Looks like a reptile to me,’ said Gorge.

  ‘It’s possible that we all see it somewhat differently, some kind of active camouflage, advanced evolutionary trait, or that it somehow creates an image of something slightly different than what it is in our mind.’

  ‘Like a glitch in the game?’

  ‘That’s one way to put it but it’s not really a glitch, it’s intentional.’

  ‘I think it looks like a fish creature!’ said Chaz chiming in.

  ‘That’s…weird,’ said Cass, ‘it’s obviously some kind of wolf.’

  ‘It looks like an animal with horns and a long tail to me. Its ears are sticking up and curving back like fox or wolf but now that I look at its face it kind of looks like a Komodo dragon,’ I said.

  Kira smiled, ‘looks like a kitten to me. As it developed it must have been adapting to the world outside and since it travelled from one world to another and so quickly it developed this strange defence mechanism, hatching during the race and attaching itself to you,’ Kira caught my eye, ‘congratulations Dad!’

  I shrugged. Sure. Why not. The creature seemed to understand commands pretty well and since I had no choice in the matter it wasn’t like I was going to argue. It could be nice to have a side kick.

  ‘That’s great and all but what are we going to do now? This entire planet is under siege and we don’t have the key,’ I placed the creature on top of my shoulder.

  ‘Give it a name,’ Kira interjected.

  ‘Not what we are going to do about the creature, about the vault key.’

  ‘Yeah, Gorge and Cass already stole it,’ Kira had an impish smile.

  I wanted to scream.

  ‘We used the race as a distraction. Now, give it a name!’

  ‘I can’t think of anything right now.’

  ‘Boop! Bop; Spot,’ Kira was ignoring me, focusing on the creature.

  ‘MEL,’ I heard Nel’s voice coming from the wrecked fighter.

  ‘No,’ I said, turning about. The little creature turned alongside me following my movements.

  ‘Something more masculine; how about Brutus,’ said Gorge.

  Both Cass and Chaz were silent but I could tell from their expressions they were trying to think of something to add to the discussion.

  ‘How about Hatch or Hatchet since it y’know, hatched from an egg?’ Chaz drew the shape of an egg with his finger in the air.

  ‘I have a K-Dog named Hatch at one of my lairs,’ said Gorge.

  ‘You have a lair?’ Kira said looking at him.

  ‘Yes, I have a lair,’ he said moving on. It would figure Gorge had a secret lair that none of us knew about.

  ‘I’ll think of a name later. Tell me how you got the vault key,’ I said, trying to turn the conversation around. I felt left out. This was the first operation that the others had run without me since we started our journey on the Spire. I felt betrayed. Alone. Used.

  ‘We’ll do better than that, watch this holo,’ Kira patted my arm.

  I sat down and watched.

  Location: Unknown

  Unknown

  Gorge stared down the sights of his rifle. He was standing outside some kind of interior hallway with Kira and a dozen Silvermanes. The footage was captured using Kira’s cube. They were aiming at an airlock door. All the lights were off and I could only make things out because the footage had been doctored. I could see the silencers that had been added to all of their weapons. Gorge, who usually went in loud, was wearing an all black stealth suit that hid his cybernetic features. Kira and the Silvermanes wore similar outfits, hers, however, had a red stripe across the side. Metal gave way and popped from the other side of the door as a ship docked. They weren’t inside the Lani, it was some kind of Silvermane ship connecting to the shipyard.

  ‘Ready,’ Gorge called out. His voice stern. The Silvermanes grunted and whispered around him as a bright light appeared and everyone found cover behind a shield. They all kept their weapons trained on the door as a dozen raiders entered.

  It took two seconds and they were gone. Rag dolls scattered across the floor. Three more raiders came from the darkness as the team entered inside the shipyard, fighting their way down several flights of stairs. Gorge, Kira and the Silvermanes dropped one body after another like they had been holding back this entire time.

  ‘Incoming,’ Kira yelled, taking point as a missile came from the raiders below. It was answered by automatic fire and the death of three more raiders dead. Gorge and Kira used single shots while the Silvermanes shot in short bursts.

  Kira dropped into a crouch next to Gorge and smiled.

  ‘You’re crazy,’ she said, raising her rifle, sighting out another raider. The stairs provided great cover, shielding their profile as they moved from corner to corner, firing at their targets from thirty feet on high.

  Two more raiders waited at the bottom but they weren’t firing. They had no idea what was coming for them. Only the dozen at that entered at the top had any idea that there was a threat. Gorge, Kira, the Silvermanes silenced the two and entered another room.

  ‘We’re going for the station, split, two teams, one takes comms,’ Gorge pointed, motioning for two of the Silvermanes and Kira to follow him.

  Kira nodded and let out a burst of suppressive fire as they entered another stretch of hallway.

  ‘Traps?’ she asked.

  ‘Probably not expecting anything like this,’ Gorge answered.

  They used the opportunity to sprint down and dive into a hole behind a small crate. Gorge waited three seconds and fired, taking out the remaining raiders.

  ‘Back on your feet,’ he said.r />
  ‘I’m right behind you, old man,’ she called out, reloading her rifle.

  ‘Is there any way you can scan ahead?’

  ‘No problem…Five more raiders and a boss. We can trail them if we need to, by now they know we are coming, they might be planning something.’

  ‘Advance, it isn’t going to matter. Circle around me after I go inside.’ Gorge ran forward and slid into the room ahead and took down four of the raiders before standing up. By that time Kira already had ShadowMask at gunpoint.

  ‘Key,’ she said, holding out her hand.

  ‘You will pay dearly for this,’ ShadowMask said in a deep groan.

  ‘You’re just another gangster, don’t get your hopes up,’ she smiled, taking the key and knocking ShadowMask to the ground.

  ‘Not much of a boss,’ Gorge said.

  ‘Should we kill him?’

  ‘First, Yueng, scan the key. Is it the real deal?’

  One of the masked Silvermanes took off his helmet and revealed Yueng’s face. He nodded his head and smiled confirming that Kira was holding the key to Trace’s vault.

  Location: Hangar

  The Lady of Lani

  Kira stopped the footage there.

  ‘After that we made our way out and split into two groups to throw off the scent. Half of us came to the Lani while the other half made a run towards the other side of the planet; five minutes later the Titans appeared. We’re assuming after ShadowMask departed, a message was sent to the FTC command who jumped here from a few systems over. Guess he had more friends than we gave him credit for and now they are searching for the key. It’s likely he never had any intention of handing the key over to the winner anyway,’ she said.