Null Protocol: A LitRPG Space Marine Adventure (Omicron Sector Book 2)

by A. M. Reynolds

“Right. Sorry. They have half armor in the back. At least, the big one does.” I was definitely more used to small easily organized missions.

  The alien followed me with a tentacle, and I dove out of the way. I hoped diving far to the side would get it off balance, but I couldn’t be so lucky. The creature spun a leg in the air and nimbly spun around to face me. Great. They were huge deadly ballerinas. I ran down the alley next to the building Norax was climbing. I figured he was at the top by that time.

  An eruption of machine gun fire from above confirmed my theory. I cut my mic and laughed at the thought of Norax going full metal on the giants from above. He was raining death from above, for sure. I laughed for a half second too long. A tentacle slammed into me, throwing me across the alley into a rather sturdy wall.

  -219 hp. (-730 dam. 70% armor) HP: 541 / 760.

  Holy crap. That thing could have killed me in one hit if it weren’t for my armor. My vision turned bright green for a second, and I realized what was happening. I dove back across the alley just in time for green flames to lick at my heels. This one had a plasma cannon arm just like the one at the sciences outpost.

  “Not today, mother fu…” I shouted but was cut short by the tentacle nearly taking my head off. I fell to my back to avoid the strike and opened fire.

  -49 hp.

  MISS

  MISS

  I somersaulted into a crouch and fired again.

  MISS

  -47 hp.

  -50 hp.

  I was barely whittling anything from its health pool, but at least I was keeping its attention. I slowly backed down the alleyway avoiding plasma blasts and tentacle slaps for the next several seconds. Every chance I got, I tapped it with another three round burst. The one-minute cooldown timer for my Nova Punch was nearly over when Norax came over the comms.

  “Got about ten percent left on this one according to its health bar. J.T., where you at?”

  “On the side opposite the bank, about to turn toward the bank.”

  “That’s not the best idea,” Norax said. “That’s where… Damnit, Aaron. You gotta turn him around!”

  Oh no! I hadn’t thought of that when I chose the slide through the legs move. I was only thinking about what I thought might look cool. It probably did, but crap, we were in a tight spot because of it. I had to change this big guy’s direction without getting obliterated.

  I changed tactics from backing down the alley to an all-out assault. Through the legs worked once. I doubted it would work again. I made for the same spot anyway.

  Predictably, it’s tentacle whip shot out at me. I sidestepped that and stopped short just as its cannon arm slammed into the ground in front of me.

  Ha! I called it. I thought.

  It turned the arm and rotated it at an impossible angle to slam me into the wall again.

  -208 hp. (-694 dam. 70% armor) HP: 333 / 760.

  My visor coughed out sparks into my vision.

  “Captain. Get it turned around. If it sees J.T., it’s liable to box her in.”

  “You mean, it’ll forget about me? That’s not so bad. Is it?”

  “Mon Captain, I do not wish to die this day,” J.T. said.

  I let the beast see her anyway. I stayed in the rubble of the wall it had slammed me into. As soon as it had spotted her, it started her way releasing a ground-shaking roar.

  “Aaron, what the hell are you doing?”

  “Damage!” I shouted as I sprinted up from the bricks. “Nova PUNCH!”

  CRITICAL HIT! Rear attack (half armor)! -3366 hp. Cooldown: 1 minute.

  Finally, I had gotten it to about the health of a level 9 boss alien. The beast turned back to me, and green plasma spilled from its eyes like angry clouds of energy.

  “Oh crap! I pissed it off!” I said turning to run. One lesson I had picked up from Colin O’Sullivan that day was to always carry grenades. I dropped a pair at its feet and ran like hell. I dove behind a pile of me-sized rubble. The ground shook with the explosion. KRAK-THOOM BOOM.

  -180 hp.

  -184 hp.

  I immediately followed that up with another series of bursts from my gun.

  “How’s that other add coming, guys?”

  “Halfway there, Captain,” Norax said. “Schmidt just got here. That should help.”

  Just about then, the other small boss rounded the corner. J.T. fired one more shot from the sniper rifle and detached the sniper attachment. She moved like a dancer. She never got in a hurry and was always a step or two out of the alien’s reach. While she was downgrading her gun, the beast turned to attack Schmidt. He was a bit above half health. That didn’t mean much with as low of a level as he was. He managed to dodge the attack.

  “Schmidt. Stop attacking for a second,” J.T. said.

  “What? Why? Ohhh. I see,” he replied.

  I ducked under another horizontal tentacle attack. My team really was working well together. I missed six of the next nine shots. I started to get worried the thing was going to turn. I didn’t want to use it yet, but I needed to make sure I had its attention when the other joined me. I activated Find the Weakness. I pulled the Overshot trick from the science labs once I had my shot lined up.

  HEADSHOT! -1312 hp

  Surely, that would give me a bit of a head start. The thing was down around 18,000 hp. It was a good thing. The other side-boss dropped to a knee.

  “Alright, Captain. I hope you’re ready for me,” Norax said.

  “Rain down,” I said. I turned on the full auto feature of my blaster rifle and started firing. I had to swap energy cells after only a short second of auto-fire.

  With Norax helping, the giant’s health bar fell much more rapidly. Pretty quickly Schmidt and J.T. filed in, and the health bar really started dropping. We had it at half health in practically no time.

  The exact second its health dropped to fifty percent, it spun around and fired a ball of green plasma between J.T. and Schmidt. It’s tentacle smashed into the top floor of the building where Norax perched.

  “Hey, ugly! Over here,” I shouted. Did I really just quote some cheesy twentieth-century film?

  It barely took notice as it proceeded to dismantle Norax’s building.

  “Norax, you’re going to have to get out of there.”

  The shooting from the rooftop stopped. I had to assume Norax was climbing his way down.

  The timer on my Nova Punch wasn’t up yet. I had used all my damaging tricks. I didn’t understand why it would be ignoring me. I shot it in the head three quick times.

  HEADSHOT! -160.

  HEADSHOT! -161.

  HEADSHOT! -163.

  The next bit was a blur. Not because I had gotten hit in the head or anything, but because my vision just went blurry. I dodged to the right at the last second feeling the thing’s tentacle scrape my armor as it went by. An explosion of green light almost fixed the blurriness. The light didn’t hit me, luckily. It must have been aimed off to the side.

  I ripped my helmet off to see what was stuck to it. There was a film covering the whole visor. Tossing it to the side, I opened fire again.

  “Is that the best you can do? Spew your creature juice on my helmet? Come! At! Me! Bro!”

  I marched forward squeezing the trigger on my EV-7 until the barrel couldn’t take it anymore. Norax walked up beside me firing with the same intensity. We had the thing boxed and were going to take it down.

  When I got within melee range, I ignited another Nova Punch. I leaped in the air and landed the uppercut attack in the thing’s stomach.

  It twisted its plasma cannon arm around and aimed it right at my face. I hadn’t even landed from the punch yet when lime green flames enveloped me.

  I accepted my fate. At least, I went out going hard. I drifted to the ground bathed in a lime green glow. The longer I was in the air, the faster I fell. That is… until I hit the compacted dirt road. I blinked away the spots, and Schmidt knelt over me.

  “I’ve got you, Captain,” he said. “I think it drop
s aggro at fifty percent. We just have to blast away at it the old school way.”

  “I could kiss you, Schmidt,” I said.

  “I tried to tell you I have a shield left, but you tossed your helmet.”

  “Yeah, I couldn’t see. You guys didn’t get hit with that stuff?”

  “Nope. Just you.”

  The giant stomped, and the ground shook. It felt like my teeth were going to rattle out of my head. I was overjoyed that I hadn’t stood up yet. Schmidt wobbled like a toy above me and had to kneel down.

  “Ready?” Schmidt asked and helped me up.

  “Not really.”

  “Five seconds,” he said.

  Jeez. I had entirely forgotten about the limited duration on the shield. I sprang to a crouch and shared a healing pack with Schmidt. Schmidt’s blue, protective sphere dissipated, and we charged.

  One last push from the team, and the boss fell to a knee in the middle of the street.

  A rumbling voice rattled from its throat. “You will not succeed. We are everywhere. We will survive.”

  “Who are you? Why is this happening?” I asked.

  “We are… DEATH!”

  It shook violently. Large bubbles swelled on the surface of its otherwise smooth skin. One by one the growing pustules exploded leaving clouds of green gas in the air around the giant.

  “Get back!”

  We all dove behind cover, and the alien erupted. An eerie green haze settled over the street. I scrambled to grab my helmet and put it on. Schmidt looked at me with sadness in his eyes. He had activated his helmet’s environmental safety protocols. Norax and J.T. looked safe too. After what felt like forever, I heard the seal engage on my mask. I still couldn’t see anything, but at least I wasn’t breathing the clouds of gas.

  A small box and glowing auras confirmed our leveling as a result of the combat.

  LEVEL UP! Congratulations on reaching Rank 8!

  08

  The bank was locked up tight. In fact, it was air-tight. Looking through the windows, I couldn’t see any of the green gas inside.

  Outside the bank, the gas dissipated after a few minutes. J.T. consulted with her wrist computer and confirmed the atmosphere had returned to normal.

  “Can you get us inside there?” I asked J.T.

  “Oui, un moment.”

  The locks on the front doors released, and we entered in a standard diamond formation. Norax took point followed by Schmidt and J.T. I rounded out the diamond. Methodically, we worked our way through the bank. There were no people in the bank proper. When we finally made it to the elevator to the vault, there was a single wooden chair leaning against the wall with a bright-eyed, teenage boy keeping a lazy watch.

  Norax and I both jumped and trained our blasters on the boy’s center of mass.

  “They said, you’d be comin’,” he said barely looking up from the carpet. Luckily, the environmental vents on the suit filtered out most smells because he needed a bath.

  “Who are they?” I asked.

  “Them monsters,” he answered looking up at me. “They said you’d be comin’, and they said you’d maybe make this far.”

  “Yeah, son. We made it this far,” Norax said. “And we’re about to make it a lot farther.”

  “Yep. They said you’d do that, too.”

  “Captain, this one’s starting to weird me out.”

  “Suck it up, Norax. That’s an order.” I turned to the boy. “You want to let us get the rest of the citizens from that vault?”

  “Sure. They said it won’t matter much, neither.”

  “Captain, can I just blast him?”

  “Norax. Take a walk. Secure our perimeter.”

  “Captain…”

  “I said, walk!” I turned to J.T. “You mind going with him? Explain things?”

  “Aye-aye, captain.”

  Norax lumbered back into the front of the bank.

  “Okay. Now, tell me what’s going on here.”

  “Sure. They came in. I got separated from everyone else when they went into the vault. I hid from the monsters in the air ducts. They eventually found me. I thought they was going to eat me or hump me or something. Instead, they just talked at me. Said all sorts of weird stuff, but what kinda stuck with me was how they was going to leave Omicron Sector and invade the flesh world. Now, I ain’t got nothing to do with the flesh world, but I know that’s bad.”

  “Yeah. That’s real bad. Schmidt, you mind checking him out.”

  “Way ahead of you, Captain. He doesn’t appear to be infected.”

  I said, “So they left you here to tell us their plan?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Where did they go?” Schmidt asked.

  “They just disappeared. Poof! In a energy wave like some kind of teleporter grabbed them from orbit.”

  “If that’s the case, let’s get him and everyone in the vault back to Rand’s. There’s not much more we can do here. We can report on this to the O.S.B., too. Maybe that will get them to open up the base,” I said.

  Schmidt nodded and said, “Maybe.”

  There were less than two dozen people in the bank’s vault. They had watched the entire ordeal outside through the bank’s close circuit security cameras. When we finally got them all on the ship, an elderly woman approached us.

  “I am Verita, the elder of this colony. First, thank you all for helping us in your time of need.”

  “There’s no need to…” I said.

  “Listen, child. We have a few among our group that might have information to help with this growing threat. We need to get to Rand as quickly as possible.”

  The old lady must have been Rand’s contact on the planet. Without making any more fuss, we sped off towards Rand’s makeshift hospital.

  09

  Rand came out from the back room. He had been meeting with the elders and his other advisors for over an hour. Norax busied himself with eating and butting heads with other Rohvianns. Schmidt looked anxious, and J.T. was working with Meiying to repair the ship.

  “Well?” I asked.

  “There’s good news and bad news.”

  “Good news?” J.T. asked.

  “Yes. Your friend is going to pull through. He’s changed, but he’ll live. Our doctors were able to extract bits of the creature DNA from his wound. In fact, we were able almost completely reverse the damage done by the aliens. He’s going to need to rest for a few days, but after that, he’ll be tip-top.”

  “Wait, so he can’t log out yet?”

  “That’s some of the bad news.”

  Norax practically bowled over Schmidt to get into the conversation.

  “Did you say, ‘Bad news?’”

  “Uh. yeah. Have any of you tried to log out recently?”

  Come to think of it, I hadn’t. I had taken the time to replenish my weapon stores and my grenades. I even distributed all of my points for making level 8. But I had never really looked at the logout option. I swiped my status screen into view. There it was. Logout. It was a simple display of power. One click, and I would be home. However, where the text was usually a dark gray, almost black, color, the text on my logout button was pale. That indicated it was inaccessible.

  “Huh?” Norax said. “I can’t log out.”

  “That’s what we’re hearing from all corners of the sector. Basically, the more you interact with these things, the more likely you are to lose that ability.”

  Schmidt said, “Yeah. I noticed that on the flight back.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything?” Norax asked flailing his arms around.

  “I didn’t want you guys to know I was infected until it was time. I just got assigned to your unit this morning. I didn’t want to lose my spot in case there was a cure here waiting for us.”

  “Oh no! So you mean, I’m infected too?” Norax moaned.

  “No. Not really infected. Just stuck in the game. I’m not sure how long we’ll be stuck here, but I am willing to bet that when we defeat these things
once and for all, we’ll have the ability to log out.”

  “The boy said they were looking to get out of the Sector. Do you think that means get out of the game entirely?”

  “Maybe,” Rand said. “Feel free to make yourselves at home for now. We’re attempting to come up with a better plan of attack. We have top minds working on this. For now, please accept our thanks, and your pay.”

  A credit transfer screen popped into view. Twenty-five thousand! I held back my excitement so I wouldn’t look over-eager. I slowly confirmed the credit transfer. I would need to divvy that up later.

  +25,000 c.u. New Balance: 25,698 c.u.

  I contemplated what the rest of my life would look like. Being stuck in a game wouldn’t be that bad. It would definitely be better than the bleak paycheck to paycheck existence outside. But I wasn’t the only one involved. For the time, we would have to stay in Omicron Sector.

  Thank You!

  I hope you enjoyed this book.

  If you want to know what happens next to Captain Aaron Taylor and the rest of the crew,

  find out when the Omicron Sector series wraps up in:

  Attack Protocol, coming soon!

  Author’s Note

  Hey there! I’m glad you decided to pick up the second installment of the Omicron Sector. I know it was a little short. Like many of you, I like to have a steady stream of updates from authors. I think there are too many once a year authors out there who make you wait forever to get the next installment. We get enough of that with television (staring you down GoT) and movies (come on Star Wars!!!) to deal with it in books, too. I grew up reading comic books. My favorite titles came out monthly, so that’s what I’m going to aim for. At least one full novel every month. In order to get there, though, I feel I should work up to that level of work. You might disagree, and that’s okay. I will keep writing whether you read my books now or when they are all finished.

  In order to stay on top of when the latest of my stories comes out, you’ll need to like and follow my page on Facebook, join my Facebook Group, or follow on Amazon. Or you could join my mailing list. Hey look. I got a mailing list!