Nav Station Algos- Floors 1-4
Page 23
He didn’t understand the words, but his vision was soon filled with the brightest light he had ever seen. It drowned out everything, even his senses.
When in Need
“Geo!” He heard the voice, but it was distant, as if they shouted through water. He blinked a few times, and the world came into focus. Some demon’s face was above him, green eyes wide and searching. They parted their lips as her chin quivered, and tears trailed down her cheeks. He didn’t fear her though as even with such a distorted face he could see the pain and fear in it. “You’re still alive, right?”
“Peyton…?” he asked in the same rough voice. She grinned and pulled him into a tight hug, but he couldn’t feel it. He felt very little, which he was grateful for. He could see Klara ahead of him, two of her demons were standing tall before Luda. They were like a wall between them and her poison blades.
“We—we couldn’t get to you. We tried, I swear we did, but all we could do was watch…” she said, her voice raspy in his ear. “I’m so sorry.”
He said nothing as she placed him back onto the ground and then held her hands over him. A small glow appeared in her palms and she moved them slowly across his body, but her expression only darkened. She looked at him and then to Klara and Mason who were keeping watch beside them. “It’s not working.”
“What do you mean?” Klara asked as she knelt down beside her. “His health isn’t going up?”
“No… I don’t understand why. Mason, get over here and try your party heal.”
Mason appeared on the other side of Geo and removed a piece of cloth from his jacket. It glowed dimly between his fingers and he flung it up into the air where it shattered in into small squares that rushed toward each of them.
“It did nothing,“ Peyton cried as she looked to them. “Nothing is working.”
“My summons can’t keep her at bay much longer,” Klara said. “I think we run for it.”
“Run where?” Mason asked and held his hands out toward the rest of the room. “The doors and windows are gone. This is her world still. Geo breaking the void changes nothing about that.”
“Then what do we do?” Peyton asked, a hint of anger and desperation in her voice.
Mason paused for a second and Geo could hear Luda wailing on the demons and he wondered if they could feel the poison like him. He hoped they couldn’t.
“We kill him,” Mason said flatly and looked around at them.
“What? What do you mean we kill him?” Klara said. “You fry your circuits when no one was looking?”
“No, just hear me out,” he said and opened his window. He turned it face them. “My
Klara and Peyton both stared.
Peyton sat back on her legs and looked down at Geo. He wished she wouldn’t as she still looked devilish to him. “Will that work?”
“You’ll take a -20 status affect,” Klara said as she looked away from the window. “Your psyche isn’t that high.”
Mason shrugged. “I’ll survive and if I go off the deep end I expect you’ll be there to knock sense into me, won’t you?”
Klara grinned. “Yeah, it’d be my pleasure.”
“Thought so. We have another problem though,” he said and looked at Peyton. “I won’t do much damage to him with my current stats. It would take me a few minutes to kill him.”
Peyton sighed and took Geo’s hand, squeezed it. “You want me to do it…”
“It’s the fastest way,” Mason said. “If we had more time—”
“No, I get it. It’s just another thing he can hate me for,” she said and sniffed back as she bent and kissed Geo’s cheek. She took up her spear and held it over him, charging her
He watched the lightning arc and dance across her spear. She shoved it through him in one quick motion. He felt it pierce him and then nothing. It was just darkness, a comforting black that was far removed from Luda’s void. He floated and wished he could just stay there.
A thin red rope appear above him, its color stark in the black. He knew he should reach for it, but he didn’t want to.
“Geo,” he heard Mason shout, his voice echoed through the void and slammed into him with the force of a punch. “Grab the rope. We need your help.”
His limbs felt like lead, but still he raised them and forced his fingers to curl around the red thread. As soon as he touched it, everything became lighter, and he was pulled through the void toward a pin-prick of light. He entered that light and stared at a rust colored ceiling.
“Welcome back,” Mason said as his face took up Geo’s vision. “Didn’t think you’d take it.”
“Almost didn’t,” Geo said and placed a hand to Mason’s shoulder as he sat up. He felt surprisingly strong and a quick look at his health bar showed it back to full. Looking around the room he found Peyton, Klara, and her summons fighting Luda and barely keeping her busy. He turned back to Mason. “You okay?”
“Things are darker, but I’m good. Only gotta deal with it for twenty minutes. How’s your psyche?”
“Seventy-eight. Better than it was. Come on, we gotta help the girls.” He got to his feet and looked around for his weapons. He found them laying against the walls and rushed over, picking them both up at a run before making his way to Peyton.
Luda dropped into a spin as she came down from her jump and fell directly toward Peyton. Geo reached them both with just enough time to rise his shield and deflect her attack. Luda tumbled over and rolled a few feet.
“Geo!” Peyton called and gripped his arm. “Are you—are you okay?”
“Better than I was. I forgive you, by the way,” he said and got a confused look from her. “For killing me.”
“Was fun,” she said as she stepped beside him and held her spear in an attack stance. “Should kill you more often.”
Geo laughed. “Let’s just try to keep it to this one time.”
“That’s fine, we have something else to kill anyway,” she said as Luda got to her feet. The woman snarled and wiped the blood from the corner of her mouth.
“So you’re on your feet again?” she said. She staggered as she stabilized herself. “Good, that gives me a chance to do it all over again.”
“You won’t touch him again,” Peyton said as she took a step forward. Geo took two and stepped in front of her. “Geo?”
“If you think you can do it again, go for it. But keep in mind, I’m not alone this time.” He set his feet, calling on his
“If all you will do is stand there, I might as well go after your friends.”
“Do you really want to do that? That doesn’t seem like you. Remember who you’re here for,” Geo said with a smirk. He didn’t know if
She shrugged and looked almost lethargic in the way she shifted her weight, but Geo knew she was anything but. He could tell by her face, by the way the muscles twitched slightly below her eye,
She hit the shield and then started to wail on it. He felt each hit, but the shield held. The problem was that her poison was bleeding through. He didn’t dare speak as he prayed the other three would take the chance and attack or notice that he was gaining poison.
They did the first, Mason’s
The girls didn’t give her a chance to breathe. Klara’s summon slammed into the floor where Luda had been and Peyton was ready for the dodge, her skill landing
each hit and Luda’s armor became shredded as she tumbled to the ground. She landed with a thud, her chest heaving. Her blades were lost in her fall, embedding themselves in the floor feet from her.
Peyton landed light as a feather and had her spear against Luda’s throat. “I should have deleted you when you were first born.”
“Sh—should have deleted us all,” Luda said through a cough. “Finish it and see for yourself what hell awaits you in the floors above.”
“What do you mean?” Geo asked. He came to a stop behind Peyton and stared down at Luda.
“You’ll see…”
Peyton looked to Geo, and he gave a slight nod. She shoved the spear forward into Luda’s throat. A spurt of blood pooled in the strained muscles of her neck and then her entire body went lax. Peyton twisted the spear free and then took a step back while wiping the sweat from her forehead with her forearm. “She was evil.”
Geo nodded as he looked down at he his hand. His little finger was back, but it felt almost like a ghost “And if what she says is true, we have a lot more evil to face.”
A door appeared in the rusted wall beside them and opened on its own to a white light. Geo looked back at his party—at his friends. “At least I have you guys to help with that, right?”
“I expect a large pay check after this,” Klara said.
“Hey, I’m just glad to get out of perpetual high school,” Mason said with a grin.
The four of them left the room with only Geo stopping to loot Luda’s corpse. He found another Mania Cube: Torture.
Next Floor
The opening to the next level showed in the safe room. Geo paused for a moment, stared at it, and then back at the group. “You ready to go?”
“Yeah…” Peyton said with a look at the doors they had entered from. “This will only get harder.”
“Still got eleven floors to go, so I wouldn't be surprised,” Klara said and patted Peyton’s shoulder as they came to stand beside Geo. “At least it isn’t just you two anymore.”
“I’ll say,” Geo said and got a glare from Peyton. “I mean that the help is good, jeez.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Do we know what the next floor will be?” Mason asked as he looked between the three of them. “I’m still new to this.”
“No, we’ll find out when we get there,” Geo said. “I’m not worried though, not now.
“Come on, these floors aren’t going to clear themselves.” Peyton said and came over and kissed his cheek. “Whatever bad has come from this, I am glad that it seems to have helped you in some ways. I’ll get you out of this as soon as I can.”
“I know that now,” he said and stopped her to kiss her cheek. He then walked to the other door. He heard her gave a short laugh before following.
While that’s cute and a little disgusting, we have other things to deal with, Cotora said.
Geo nodded. “We’re going. It’s not like they won’t wait for us.”
That’s not what I’m talking about.
“What?” he asked, but she didn’t respond. He looked to the girls and Mason and they shrugged their shoulders. He knew Cotora was hiding something, and he was a little scared to find out what. She didn't answer, and the door opened to the next level.
They stepped through the door and froze in place. There was no white light, no real change in perception. They just appeared in the next floor which looked like the space station. Geo looked around, trying to find what was different. When nothing jumped out at him, he made his way to the large windows at the end of the hall.
“What’s going on,” Klara asked as she hurried after him. “This isn’t like the other floors.”
“It’s the Med/Sci floor,” Peyton said. “It’s still AR, but nothing is really being masked by it. That doesn't make sense.”
“This might… fucking hell,” Geo said as he stopped at the window and stared out at the red moon that had been a constant view for the last eight years. It had changed a lot.
The surface was cracked so deeply that some kind of red liquid was spewing from it and into space. The material that was being flung away created a thin atmosphere around the moon.
“That… that can’t be good,” Mason said. “Is that a real moon?”
“It’s real, and it’s completely unstable,” Peyton said. “That material its throwing out is used in hyper-drive construction. Its entire mantel must be made of the stuff. Something is super-heating it though.”
Geo looked around for the glass eye of Cotora and found one in the next hallway. “Is this what you were talking about when you said our orbit was unstable?”
It is.
“And you said you handled it?” he asked as he pointed to the window. “That doesn’t look fucking handled. That moon goes pop, or we get hit with any of that spray and we’re done.”
We don't have to worry about that for a few more years, Cotora said, annoyed. If I had access to the beam bands I’d have called for rescue. As we do not have access to such a thing, I handled it.
“Goddammit,” Geo said and gripped his hair with his hands, nearly pulling it out. “What are the odds we get knocked out of the moon’s orbit?”
The calculations I have run say about a 2.5% chance at the moment. Further loss of SB-118’s mass or it becoming more unstable could have us being picked up by the planet’s gravity. If so, we would lose power for three station days as orbit of the planet is ten station days. Components wou—“
“Would freeze and we’d be a husk after a few orbits,” Geo said and looked at Peyton.
“Why?” Klara asked.
“The station has been setup to always be in view of the star of this system so it will gather power from it. There isn’t much need of batteries… which means that once we’re in the planet’s shadow back up batteries will only last a day at most and then we’re in the dark until our orbit finishes. Worse, everything has to come back up each time the system restarts and any of important systems could fail on reboot,” Peyton said, her voice raspy and her eyes wide. “Is there no propulsion on this station?”
I have used much of our fuel just keeping us as we are. I’m adjusting every two days to stay out of the range of the fountains.
“That… that sucks,” Klara said. “Did you tell Amber about this? If that happens she’ll die too.”
I’ve made her and the other AI’s aware. They are deciding what to do, if anything.
Geo punched the wall and Peyton flinched. “We can’t keep doing this game, if we do we’re all dead. She has to let us call for help.”
“Until the game is done, she won’t let us do anything,” Peyton said and Klara nodded. “Our best chance is to clear the station before that moon gets us killed.”
“How long did it take us to do four floors, Peyton? A month? Two?”
“A month and a few days…”
“Exactly,” Geo said and pointed out the window. “You think we can clear twelve more before we’re out of a stable orbit?”
“Don’t yell at me, I’m in the same place as you are,” Peyton said and narrowed her eyes at him. He didn’t backdown and instead laughed. She cut him off before he could speak. “I know, I know. It’s my fault you're here. That changes nothing. I’m going to die here with you if we don’t fix this issue and we can’t do that if we don’t get out of this game.”
“Looks like we’re out of the game—”
No, you are still very much in it. Cotora said, and they all heard something coming toward them. The lights flickered and dimmed, giving the station a dead feel.
Guns echoed in the halls as things banged on closed doors or walls. The three readied themselves.
“We’ll discuss this later,” Peyton said.
“Just a head’s up, Psyche is seventy something. Not my fault if I go nuts.”
"Mine's lower," Mason said. "But same."
“I’ll knock you both out, don’t worry,” Klara said and got a glare from Geo as the four of them headed deeper into the halls to f
ace a new floor.
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About the Author
J.P. Carver lives in central Pennsylvania, spending the days writing and losing himself in new worlds and ideas. Carver has worked in various technology based jobs over the years and has found writing about tech much more fun than fixing it.
www.jpcarverwriter.com
jpcarver@jpcarverwriter.com
Copyright © 2019 by J.P. Carver
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