by Hugo Huesca
“Hey, Lance!” I exclaimed. He hadn’t even realized the channel was open. He jerked his head back up, locking eyes with me. “You’ve been shooting at us this whole time and the planet’s atmosphere has damaged our shields more than your legendary ship. Perhaps that pilot should be piloting the Apollo, don’t you think? Perhaps I tell your Alliance after this.”
“Keep talking, ass, I’m getting a lock on you!”
“That’s so scary, big boy! What did you tell me that one time, Lance? ‘Sorry man, but I don’t party up with noobs.’ Here, let me give you a chance.”
Twelve seconds before we made land-fall in the most inelegant of ways, I did something suicidal: I flew in a straight line, sacrificing all maneuverability and putting Teddy right in Lance’s sights.
“THE APOLLO WING HAS A LOCK ON US, MASTER. OH MY, I CAN’T DIE AGAIN. I DIDN’T LIKE BEING DEAD THE FIRST TIME.”
“Cole…!”
“Shields, up! Walpurgis, fire everything!”
Missiles left the Apollo and flew towards us, two apocalypse riders bringing doom. At the very same time, our shields flared up and a hundred flares flew straight back to the Apollo, followed by our last artillery missile.
Several things happened at the same time. The flares blared bright against the screens of the Apollo, overloading their camera feeds. Rylena unloaded on their radar and flight-computer, hammering down with the full might of her Diamond-ranked battlemind ability. The artillery missile exploded and the fragments detonated the plasma missile midway from the two ships.
Three seconds.
The explosion blared against our shields, which were at 55% thanks to its regeneration, and was absorbed by them.
I pulled the flight-stick all the way up and our inertia-dampeners burnt themselves out instantly as they fought with gravity and our brutal acceleration. For a terrible instant, nothing happened. The desert was almost upon us as the g-forces smashed so hard against my body that my personal shields flared up.
Then, the golden sand was replaced by blue sky and golden horizon…
I had just enough time to watch as the Apollo, blind and stunned, tried to do the same thing we just did, a second too late. Lance’s feed was still open and I got to watch in first row how he unloaded his down-side jet streams at full strength, trying to earn the extra altitude.
Nice attempt, but he clearly never played a normal flight simulator, only space ones.
The Apollo Wing broke into four pieces before our eyes and I got to see the wooden-furnished cabin disintegrate all around Lance as he screamed in rage and terror and looked straight at me…
Then my former ship’s pieces hit the ground and the feed went blank.
The last Posse fighter barely evaded the ensuing explosion and managed to stay in the air instead of smashing into Validore like Lance. In doing so, it exposed itself to Beard’s turret and my friend didn’t miss the half-second window.
We had won.
Congratulations! You defeated your rival and advanced your character arc! You’re a Legendary-ship Buster! You’re now a platinum-ranked Pilot. Your skills have gone up: Piloting (48th level)
We didn’t jump in the air to celebrate nor did we exchange high-fives. I felt exhausted, like I’d finished a marathon without running a single day of my life beforehand. A column of smoke rose on the screens where Francis pinpointed the crash site. The flames and the engine fuel-cells reacted with the golden sand of Validore and the smoke that rose was purple and pink. A fitting end for Lance and his ilk.
Rylena slumped briefly over her console and exhaled deeply. “Next time you do something like that, warn us.”
“I thought you were fine, none of you screamed or anything.”
“I was too terrified to scream,” said Beard.
“Well, that should teach you to have more faith in me,” I told them with a tired smile.
Rylena shook her head. “The Apollo was trying to jam your controls the whole time, man. If they had succeeded only for a second…” Then she smiled, too. “But they didn’t.”
“So, you’re okay with destroying Kipp’s legendary ship?” Walpurgis asked from the back.
Posse of Iron may have insured the Apollo, but the insurance company couldn’t fart out another legendary starship in response to the lost one. They would receive an end-game ship, top of the line, with bleeding edge systems and technology. It wouldn’t be the Apollo, though. The Apollo would never rise from the crater where it had disintegrated into a paste.
I should have felt destroyed by what I’d done to Kipp’s last gift. Guilty, like I’d just tarnished his memorial. Instead, I felt satisfied. “You know, guys? I think I’m surrounded by Kipp’s legacy right now. Right here, in this ship.”
The ensuing silence was a mixture of pride and awkwardness. Beard scratched his eyelids as if searching for an inexistent something-in-his-eye and Walpurgis coughed to hide a tiny smile.
Rylena didn’t do either of those things, but instead stared at me with her inscrutable poker face, the one that I could never decipher. She was so immobile with her bright green eyes that she seemed to me like the statue of some long forgotten goddess.
I was wondering what she would be a goddess of when a pair of soft lips kissed mine. I felt a jolt of electricity and endorphins travel down my spine and chest —my real ones— and I opened a window to the real world to find Rylena —the real one, with warm, human eyes— staring at me with a smile. She covered her lips with a finger and went “shhh!” before I could begin to stutter like an idiot.
It was then when the doors of the beta testing room exploded inward and Rylena, Walpurgis, and I were showered by wooden slivers and glass. A cloud of smoke came into the room and a solitary silhouette of a man walked out of it.
Rylena coughed and threw herself away from an imaginary line of fire. Walpurgis was only beginning to react: even with her reflexes, she hadn’t looked into the real world just yet.
I did the only thing I could think of. I tore my mindjack off and tried my best to shake the brutal feeling of disorientation.
The man’s silhouette was becoming clearer as the smoke dissipated. He was screaming something while waving a long stick in his hand… No, it was a rifle. I clenched my teeth and breathed deep puffs of air mixed with sawdust and concrete. I began coughing and my stomach tried to puke —but it was empty.
But I stood up and fought the sudden log-out symptoms as best as I could. My vision slowly became focused again and my hearing came back.
“—don’t make a move!” the man was yelling, “move away from those mindjacks right the hell now! You have three seconds—”
He was dragging something behind him, while pointing his rifle with a single arm. It was something big and bulky that he slid forward on the ground with a grunt of effort. It came out of the smoke like a gigantic grenade and fell in the middle of the room.
It was Darren. He was pale and unmoving and his shirt was covered in blood. I could see the exit wounds of several bullets in his lower back.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Rune Universe
Rylena, Walpurgis, and I stood side-by-side with our hands raised as a single red laser line slid methodically back and forth between each of our chests. The man stepped out of the smoke, finally revealing his identity.
I had never seen him before in my life.
“Who the hell are you?” I said, unable to control my surprise. He couldn’t be with the police. The SWAT drones never came with real human beings (what would be the point of risking lives?)
“I’m the man with the gun, Cole Dorsett. I’m also the man you’re going to hand that mindjack of yours right the fuck now if you want to live.”
To emphasize his point, he trained the rifle right on my chest. A red dot appeared on top of the spot where my heart was.
“You killed Darren—” I began, ignoring his order.
“He tried to buy you some time,” the man said, “but he failed. He’s only unconscious, so if you play
your cards right and do as I say, he and you will live to see another day.”
“You shot him in the stomach,” pointed Walpurgis with ice-cold calmness. I knew my friend was only thinking one single thing: how do I breach the distance to him? “Three times.”
The man didn’t even bother to blink. “Medicine can heal a lot these days, even if someone bleeds to death. But if you try to do to me what you did to Seitaro Ogawa, I’ll shoot you in the head. God himself won’t be able to bring you back, then.”
“What do you mean what we did to Seitaro Ogawa?” asked Rylena. “Cole shot him in the knee. He wasn’t bleeding out when we left him with… Oh.”
The man took out a plastic device out of his suit’s pockets and threw it on the floor between us. It landed a few meters by the bloody body of Darren. I recognized it then: it was the syringe injector that Ogawa had carried with him. It carried the same poison that he’d used in Kipp’s parents and indirectly on my friend, too.
The syringe was empty.
Rylena and I turned to Walpurgis. The girl’s eyes were cold and withstood our gaze without blinking. “You may let some things go, Cole. Not me.”
I could only open my mouth and say nothing. I could think of nothing to say.
“We had no idea,” Rylena told the man, recovering quickly. “But he did plan on use that thing on us.”
“Seitaro Ogawa was a shit of a person,” he said, “but he was still a billionaire with hundreds of connections. You are all going to jail after I turn the SWAT drones back on. Jail or the grave. Your call, Dorsett. The mindjack, now.”
It felt like winning the lottery, only to have your ticket burn in a fire. It felt like being utterly defeated.
Perhaps I can charge him… I thought. But it was a stupid idea. A modern rifle had much more stopping power than a mere pistol. I would not make it two steps in before he shredded me.
“I hope whatever is inside this is worth it,” I told him as I grabbed the mindjack with one hand, “you guys have more blood on your hands than we do.”
“A small price to pay for saving the world,” he said. He extended his hand for the mindjack and I walked slowly towards him. I had to step over Darren (I didn’t dare to think of him as a corpse) and when I was close enough, he gestured for me to slide it over the floor.
“That’s what you’re doing?” I told him, ignoring his orders for a risky moment. “Or is that what you tell yourself you’re doing so you can sleep at night? People like you and Caputi act like you’re the good guys, while you murder and blackmail and crush everyone in your path. You really think you’re saving the world? Because Seitaro Ogawa thought this was a business opportunity. Isn’t it more accurate to say you’re saving the Government’s interests?”
The man furrowed his brow. “I don’t care what you think I’m doing, Dorsett. I have a duty to my country. I’ll kill to fulfill that responsibility if I have to. You’re acting in your own self-interest, too. Risking the safety of the entire human race at the request of your dead, delirious friend? The poison reached his brain, Dorsett, I read the files. There’s no possible way he was sane at the end. You have no right to decide in the name of humanity. What’s on your mindjack belongs to the government. Hand it over, now.”
I decided right then that I would jump him when he knelt to grab my mindjack. I didn’t even care about surviving anymore. I was tired of suited men and women talking at me like they knew me, right before trying to ruin my life.
“Wait,” Rylena said, “wait one second. Cole’s mindjack is empty. He gave the Keygen to me.”
“Irene!” exclaimed Walpurgis, turning to her. So, murder didn’t phase her, but this did? “Don’t!”
“Rylena—” I began. The man turned to her, his rifle now trained on her chest.
“Is that true?”
Rylena nodded. She had her mindjack in her hands. “In case someone —like you, actually— stole his account or his mindjack. We kept it in a bank for some time, but after that, I hid it in my virtual drone. It has a small inventory, you should be able to get it no problem if I give you my account’s password.”
“If you’re lying,” he said, “I’m executing him first.”
Rylena winced, but she didn’t lower her eyes, which she had trained in the man’s. I realized I knew that look. “I’m not lying. It’s in my drone’s inventory. Got that?”
She tossed him the mindjack before he realized she wasn’t even speaking to him. She was speaking to me.
Her mindjack flew in the air like it was swimming in an Olympic pool. For one brief second, the man’s eyes and full attention were in the mindjack and away from us. I knew what was going to happen next, but it happened so fast that I didn’t have enough time to open my mouth and scream.
The mindjack was midway through the air, tracing an arc, when Walpurgis drew Ogawa’s pistol out of her backpocket with a lightning-fast blur of her hand. The man opened his eyes in surprise and instantly moved his rifle towards her. He pressed the trigger… And a single pistol shot smashed his rifle, turning it into slag and tearing it out of his hands. All between heart-beats.
The man collapsed to the floor without making a single noise, the remains of his weapon next to him. A dark circle of blood coalesced on his chest: Walpurgis’ shot had managed to hit him after taking his rifle away.
Rylena’s mindjack fell to the floor with a clank right next to him and time resumed its normal flow.
“Holy fucking shit—” I began.
Walpurgis pointed the gun at our fallen assailant.
He raised his hands weakly. They were covered in blood. “Wait, wait… The drones are coming… They react to gunfire… Don’t shoot…”
“Everyone is a badass until you shoot them in the chest,” Walpurgis whispered. But she lowered her gun.
Perhaps she’d had her fill of violence for the day.
The man was right. I could hear the heavy steps of the drones as they rushed through stairs and floor barely able to hold their weight.
I turned to Rylena.
“They are less than twenty seconds away,” she said, “we can try to escape, but…”
Yeah. I nodded. Escape wasn’t fucking likely.
And I was tired. One way or the other, this was going to end now. I had my mindjack in my hand. “Run away, girls, at least try. I’m staying here and having a last go at Validore.”
“You’re insane,” the man coughed. A glob of blood bubbled out of his mouth and drowned his words.
“No way I’m leaving you,” Rylena said, “neither of you.”
Funny how you can know someone for just a couple of months and still get them in such a fundamental way (even if you knew jack about them in everything else) that you can know nothing you can say will convince them to put a foot away from a room.
Instead of saying all that, we smiled. Tired smiles, waiting for the end. At least we’d go quickly.
Walpurgis exhaled loudly and started walking out of the room. “You two are going to give me diabetes. Stay here if you want, I’m doing what he,” she pointed at Darren, “was trying to do.”
“What?”
Walpurgis stepped over Darren and then over the suited Gov-man and turned around right at the edge of the door. She was holding Ogawa’s gun in front of her, like a sword. “I’ll buy you two minutes. Probably less. Don’t waste them.”
Then she looked at Rylena and smiled fiercely. “We could’ve been great together, cutie. See you both later.”
And she left the room. Before I could even process what just happened, the first shot rang. More followed.
“Quick, Cole, the mindjack!” Rylena took me out of my stunned daze. We couldn’t let Walpurgis’ sacrifice go to waste.
“She’s… killing herself…” gasped the man in the floor as he lay in a pool of his own blood. “The drones will be… merciless…”
Rylena smiled a ferocious smile. “You think? Something interesting about that girl. Turns out there is an entire Alliance of real-wo
rld soldiers in Rune. You knew that? Well, even with them around, the name on the number one position for Shooting skills is Walpurgis.”
I’d dropped my mindjack with all the shooting going on, so I knelt to retrieve it and held it over my head. Before I’d time to put it on, I saw the suited man reach into his waist with a trembling hand that dripped blood.
Of course he had a fucking sidearm, I had time to think before, for the third time this day, I’d the wrong end of a gun staring at me.
“Don’t do it…” he gasped, “throw the ‘jack. Right now.”
“Cole…” Rylena was too far away from both of us to try anything. I knew it. She knew it.
I tried to think like her for a second. The man was bleeding out. I could throw the mindjack and wait, but then we’d run out of time.
I don’t even know your name, I thought. Funny what details we choose to focus on when we realize we’re about to get shot.
I had heard the story of a man who had managed to endure after dying, surviving as a shade over the Internet. Perhaps I’d even met him.
Who knows? Maybe I could do the same, even for only a couple minutes. That’s all I needed.
Rylena, like she always did, knew what I was going to do before I finished deciding it. “Don’t you fucking do it!”
The man was dying but he managed to kneel anyways. He was running on pure willpower. It’d be an amazing sight if he wasn’t about to kill me. “You’re condemning us all, kid. I’ll shoot. I swear. I’ll kill a child if it means saving mankind…”
I looked him straight in the eyes. It was like staring directly at the sun. He was burning with duty, desperation, rage… Like a knight of old. I kept contact as I raised the mindjack to my head. “Well, fuck you too,” I told him.
The mindjack covered my vision. Rylena screamed somewhere far away. Someone else roared, probably myself. Three gunshots blared in the cramped room and a terrible force threw me to the floor like a rag-doll.
My chest burned and breath had left my lungs. I gasped for air like a fish out of water and air barely came at all. Not enough. Not enough.