Glitchworld

by Damien Hanson

  For now, Derek was dazed from the medpack she’d slapped onto his body. It was in the process of suturing up his stab wound and injecting him with various drugs.

  “Come with me, Sigourney,” Meredith commanded.

  She drew the sexpot away from her hairy bigfoot conquest and into the surviving portions of the ship. The cargo hold had survived mostly intact, which meant plenty of food and basic supplies. Lots of guns and ammo, which was good.

  “Hey,” Meredith said, “Many thanks to you. Please, help yourself to anything you find on the ship. My wieekoo and I will be heading out as soon as we can.”

  The hot ass killer regarded her with hypnotic pale green eyes, like fresh spring buds. “I will help in any way I can, armored warrior,” the newcomer said. “I owe you a great debt for supplies, medicine and the meal.”

  “No, you’ve done enough already. We can totally take care of ourselves.”

  “Then allow me to take you safely to your destination. Your companion mentioned a quest of some kind.”

  Kered and his flapping lips. She sighed. “Sure, yeah. Of course. You’re working on your own quest too, right?” She’d probably taken the same quest from Flooblegorp or whatever its name was.

  “Ah, yes. The quest. I’d be honored to join you. Surely it would be easier… together. I sense you have the knowhow, and I have a great deal of experience fighting.”

  A park veteran. Great, good, grand, wonderful. With all the extra experience and Access Level upgrades this woman might have… wait…

  She made several taps on her Prestige tablet, and peeled the avatar away from the woman. Beneath the golden, toned exterior–

  Meredith did a double take. She was the same! The exact freaking same in real life as her avatar! Not a wart, a pimple, no wrinkles or halo of frizzy hair making her look like a put-upon single mother. She had to be some kind of trust fund goddess who never had to do a day of heavy lifting (or heavy coding) in her life.

  “Is there a problem?” Sigourney asked, popping open the lid of a can of tuna and dropped it all in her gullet in one go.

  “No, uh, not at all,” Meredith stuttered. She moved back over to Derek, who in his groggy state was staring at the new woman and smiling warmly, his eyes shining.

  “She’s pretty,” Derek stated, then giggled. “Pretty damn hot.”

  Meredith gave him a cold hard stare. Her avatar Kayle added a wink.

  “Thanks Meredith! I mean Jayle Kai,” he said, then he laughed. “I just said Jayle Kai. What is wrong with me?”

  “AR drugs,” Kayle Jai said, unplugging her pack for his mostly healed shoulder. “We’ve been here a while, let’s go get this mission done and head back to base, with a nice bed, some wine, and something good on the tunetube.”

  “Yes,” Sigourney smiled at Meredith's scowl, “let’s.”

  ***

  If felt good to leave the pod and head out into the wild world. Even if they quickly found a paved highway to trod upon, in good repair, it still felt like something new and unsettled. An alien world to be explored and conquered. Something wild to be tamed.

  Especially now that they had Sigourney with them, Derek was starting to feel pretty good about their chances of actually getting through whatever challenge lay ahead. She was certainly a skilled fighter.

  The weather was really clearing up quickly. Holes in the cloud cover shined down the light of the system’s impressive A class star. The sun’s rays came down with standard Earth intensity due to their greater solar distance, but the chromaticity was such that everything was bathed in a slightly bluer radiance than they were used to.

  “What a world!” Derek exclaimed, Kered hooted happily overtop of him. “This is exactly like the time that–”

  “Masked Midnight and Bluejay, issue 69. The Bastille of the Bluish,” Sigourney finished for him. Derek melted a little inside. And also solidified a little.

  Embarrassing. He double hoped the AR would conceal a half chub, mostly by whispering to himself. Please please please don’t let anyone notice.

  Meredith had been holding her bounty hunter helmet, and now put it on.

  “Oh my god, yes, absolutely, exactly. Holy cow– man,” he blushed and coughed. “I mean woman, well, wow. That’s fan stuff right there. You’re a fan!”

  He could just about feel the displeasure radiating off Meredith. He couldn’t understand why. Their chances of success with an actual gaming party were way higher than just two of them.

  “Hahaha,” Meredith laughed, though it didn’t sound genuine. “Haha. Well we’re almost there. Let’s get off of this road. Do you see that hill over there? We need to head over and take cover in those trees. They are thin so we’ll have to hide well. And we better stop talking right now so they can’t hear us.”

  Sigourney nodded. Derek started to speak, but Sigourney put a finger to her lush lips and Derek gulped, his Adam’s apple bobbing.

  They went off of the road, over cracked, sandy soil and past yellowish stalks of tough otherworldly plantlife. Something scurried past them in the underbrush.

  At the base of the hill, Meredith put up a hand, like they were covert ops. All of them paused.

  “What is it, Mere– I mean Kayle?” Derek asked. She shushed him.

  “I feel it,” Sigourney whispered, crouching down. “Something is about to happen.”

  “Up into those trees!” Meredith commanded. “Quickly! Someone’s coming!

  They all scrambled up and hunkered down. Something flashed in the HUD. A 9.

  “Wha–” Derek started.

  Meredith shushed him with a pointed look, then pointed over to a low rise in the alien landscape. He squinted into the weird light of their huge blue sun and tried to make out what she’d seen.

  Seven figures came into view. They wore deep gray jumpsuits, covered over with chunky, reflective black armor: breastplates and stylized skulls on each shoulder, along with forearm gauntlets. Their jackboots clacked hard against the desert hardpan. Their white skull helmets seemed both eerie and comical, with the eye sockets wide-eyed but also angrily so. They stopped at a spiked upper jawline, but a decorative element on the breastplates gave them a lower jaw that seemed stretched to the limit.

  Sigourney turned her attention back to Meredith. “You have the natural bearing of a born leader, armored one.”

  “Kayle.”

  The newcomer nodded sagely. “Kayle then. I will follow your lead, Kayle.”

  Derek pulled up his character sheet. Where was stealth or sneak? Ah, Prowl. “I… don’t have any Prowl. Not sneaky.”

  “Group action,” Meredith whispered. “All three of us roll and take the value of the high roller. If the others roll bad enough though, it can cause Stress. Now, just sneak.”

  They were actually saved by a crystalline cactus near where the armored aliens were headed. One second it gleamed violet in the harsh glow of the bluish sun, and the next it had grown to three times its normal size, and was flailing around in a decidedly un-cactus-like way.

  “Effing glitches,” Kayle murmured, then waved at them to follow her.

  Derek did his best, but it seemed like his wieekoo body wasn’t built for moving quietly. While Sigourney lightly made her ascent without a sound, he shoved little dirt avalanches behind him with each step up the steep rise. He tried not to stare at her chainmail-covered behind or athletic legs, and failed miserably.

  He chalked it up to being twenty-nine and being in a long string of pretty awful relationships.

  The denizens of the Necropolis were oblivious to our dashing heroes, given the wacky waving inflatable arm flailing cactus over there, and he counted himself lucky. Both the ladies seemed to have done an admirable job keeping quiet, so he was glad for the group action rule. The roll result in his HUD had been 1 and 3, another failure, but another Plot Point.

  He almost spoiled the whole thing as soon as he crested the rise by opening his big wieekoo gob and warbling something unintelligible, but he managed to shut his ya
p and just gape at the necropolis mentally.

  Maybe he’d been expecting something like Castle Greyskull, with towering turrets and a big skull shape where you walk through the mouth, but this wasn’t it. He was instead faced with pyramids of dusky charcoal stone rising hundreds of feet in the air. Each pyramid was flanked by multiple enormous statues of aliens with bestial heads, just like something out of Egyptian myths. The aliens themselves had once been insectoid, with four leg limbs and two quote arm unquote limbs. The whole set up seemed mantis-like, except for the huge leonid heads, or the porcine heads, or the reptilian heads. In those arms they held freaky spiked spears, huge spiked mauls, or swords with basket hilts covered in spikes.

  One in particular appeared much like a snake’s head, with glassy marble eyes made of some precious gem or volcanic glass, and two whiplike tongues hanging to the statue’s base.

  And all of them, pyramid or statues or the other structures (walls, perhaps graves or mausoleums) were clearly thousands of years old. A handful of statues had been sheared off at the waist and were lying in bits on the ground, and some of them were surrounded by scaffolding. Clearly restoration efforts were underway.

  And just as clearly, whatever these armor wearing creatures were, they weren’t the ones who had made this city of death. They’d come upon it and now held it in reverence. The sheer breadth of the place was mind-boggling, but also the number of Necro-worshippers moving about the place.

  “Ah, Necrolites,” Kayle whispered, her voice shot through with nostalgia. “My sweet babies.”

  “Back on topic. Neebleglarg’s son is somewhere in there,” Kered whispered.

  “I thought his name was Gloopleblork.”

  “Noopleflark?” He offered. “It wasn’t Nipple-something, definitely. Pretty sure it started with an N.”

  “Neekelnorp?”

  “Definitely three syllables.”

  Sigourney watched this absurd discussion go on for several passes before holding up a hand. “It may matter, but it doesn’t now. These Necrolites have a defensive perimeter. Kayle, is there a way past? Under?”

  Meredith nodded. “Plenty of these ancient burial and worship sites had underground passages, but there’s no way of knowing where. If only we had BOOBS here.”

  Derek couldn’t help it; he just couldn’t stop his eyes from roaming. It was like needing to pee and being unable to stop thinking about running water.

  “Biosphere Orbital Observation Broadcast System,” Meredith said flatly.

  “Why do you have all these perverted acronyms!” He cried.

  Sigourney bolted forward and clapped a hand over his furry mouth. “Not the time. Kayle, is there a way to check BOOBS with the supplies we have?”

  Kayle hesitated, then sighed heavily, but in the end she produced the Prestige game tablet. After a few minutes of tapping, a bracelet materialized on the ground between them. “I teleported it from the ship’s cargo stores, careful it’ll be–”

  Kered reached forward, but hissed from being burned. Some of his finger fur had been singed.

  Kayle didn’t sound too upset when she said, “Be careful, it might be hot.”

  “My,” he said, “what hot BOOBS you have.”

  “The better to get the geopositional lay of the land, my dear,” Kayle said. She fanned the device a few times. “Put it on. It should have satellite data on above and below ground entry points.”

  He slid the device on, which amounted to not much more than a thick, silvery gauntlet with a tablet computer stuck on one side, about the size of the palm of his hand. It was still warm to the touch, but not uncomfortably so. He tapped at it.

  After a minute of playing with his new BOOBS, he had it more or less figured out, and zoomed down toward their position. He found one good underground passage nearby. “It looks like… about three hundred yards to our left. In a partially collapsed… reliquary, I guess?”

  Sigourney nodded towards Kayle, who was already getting up and dusting herself off.

  “Let’s do it.”

  Chapter 9 - Playing the Loot

  Meredith knew Derek had never served in the Army. He didn’t know how to properly keep a low profile in the open, or how to move then take cover. But he was learning fast and had tremendous graphical instruction. Sigourney’s glistening buns showed him the way.

  Meredith could practically see the thought bubbles coming out of his head. Okay okay, crouch march to there, then up and sprint, veer for that straggly pinon over there. Pause. Check for patrols. Sprint to the crystal cactus. One more check. Then a dive for that lump of sandy soil jutting out like a head. Thank you Sigourney’s butt!

  Meredith followed last, watching Derek flail about tactically. She had never served either, but she knew that he wasn’t doing it right. It wasn’t hard to see when she had the real deal leading the way. The chainmail bikini swung and slapped as Sigourney acrobatically and tactfully made her way to the recess of the reliquary. The wild wonderment on Derek’s stupid, hot face made it seem like he was watching magic in action.

  She hmphed and followed behind a bit carelessly, simply marching along with her weapon at the ready. Sigourney watched from the shade of the entrance.

  “That wasn’t very tactical, but it worked. Well done, Kayle,” she praised her.

  “Whatever.”

  The reliquary was little more than a pile of rubble that could only, with the strictest of definitions, be called man-made. A few pitted stones appeared to make up what had once been the walls, thousands of years ago. Meredith occupied her mind, for a time, with the certainty that she and the other coding teams had done some damn fine work. The Necropolitan insignias were gorgeous works of inspiration, as was the wriggly little hole Sigourney squirmed into. With any luck, they’d coded some alien ambush scorpions to bite the Amazon on any of the ninety percent of her that was unarmored.

  When Derek turned back to her, though, she melted a little inside. The unfiltered joy on his big hairy face softened her up.

  “You remember the school play we did?” he whispered. “Pirates of Pasqhetti, I think it was.”

  Of course she hadn’t forgotten. She remembered every miserable moment of that torture fest.

  “Because, like, it’s pitch black backstage. Remember, I totally knocked into this cart in the wings, and a bunch of metal folding chairs clanged all over in the middle of that serious part?”

  Meredith remembered finding him in a secluded part of the theater, making out with his girlfriend of the month. And then hearing him complaining about how she’d only showed up to fleece him of his allowance and paper route money. She also remembered him telling her the crew were good people, when they weren’t. They razzed her about her grades and her brains and her hairstyle, of all things.

  Just like everyone else.

  Kered Mingham squished himself into the entrance. Like a stinky wieekoo jerk face who had no concept of thoughtfulness or the world outside his own idiot–

  A shaggy hand appeared out of the darkness. “Come on. It’s pretty slippery.”

  She deflated a little inside, took the hand, and tried to wiggle through. Except, she wouldn’t go. The armor bunched up around her armpits and refused to let her though. Worse, it squealed and shrieked against the stones.

  “What was that?” Sigourney’s voice came from real close to Derek.

  “It’s not… I can’t get down.”

  Derek wrapped her arms around her waist and tugged on her lower half, and while she’d normally enjoy that kind of treatment, she swore at him and told him to cut it out. She landed a nice kick, and he backed right off.

  A shout from far off announced that she’d been spotted. She gritted her teeth, crawled back out, and took off all the armor in the midst of a tsunami of verbal sewage. Shots began to spang off the reliquary rocks, and she shouted at them in a fury. Then she tossed the armor down and dove below before they shot her butt off.

  Kered was staring at her, slack-jawed.

  “What? They
’re back there. Let’s go.”

  Instead, Kered Mingham stepped forward, gently moved her aside, and clenched his fists. Soon after, the rocks began shifting, and the entrance of the reliquary vanished.

  “Good thinking,” Sigourney praised the hairy man beast. “But they clear it soon enough. Let’s go find this Gleeblebarf character and get him back to where he belongs.”

  Kayle proceeded to get back into her armor, then fumbled a bit. With a click, there was light. Magnalite 40k, the best and brightest from Terran Industries limited, to be precise.

  Derek shut his eyes and shielded his face with a hairy arm. His avatar moaned and hooted.

  “Oh be quiet you damn Sellar Battles ripoff,” Kayle Kai scolded him. Sigourney, she noticed, was looking at her without an ounce of discomfort.

  That woman has ovaries of steel. Buns of steel too.

  Meredith looked at Derek and then back at Sigourney. Her face burned red and she felt a little hollow about her stomach.

  “Good move dropping that armor, Kayle,” Sigourney said, stepping forward to clap her on her armorless and naked shoulder. “We will need that clever head of yours to help us get through this place. Without you, we might be lost.”

  Meredith’s face kept burning, but now her eyes were confused and a little shiny. Sigourney turned and took the lead, gesturing for them to follow.

  “Sigourney! You are one dynamite gal,” Derek called. Meredith’s scowl returned.

  “Move it hairball,” Meredith commanded. The three of them pushed forward, Sigourney artfully dodging and weaving from cover to cover, probing all available fire lanes for enemy targets, Derek clumsily trying to imitate, and Meredith marching along behind, her face constantly battling between jealousy and scorn.

  They moved through the living ruins, past sculptures of long dead heroes fitted with electronic eyes. Sigourney put out each one with a thrown blade, retrieved with impressive Athletics.

  Twice they crossed tracks cut through the aquamarine blocks that made up the walking paths. She walked up and back, never changing the direction of her feet, to throw off their trackers, if they had them.