by Jeff Sproul
"We don't have much to give you," said Chrono. "But I might as well ask anyway. Need anything?"
"No, I'll be fine. I uh…let me just double check, though," said Riley as he quickly pulled up his status screen and checked over his equipment. "I'm good to go, I think," said Riley as his eyes scanned over his items. He hadn't changed his loadout at all in the past few days. "Alright, looks like I've got everything I need."
"Then good luck," said Chrono. "Gella said to head up to the bridge. Aegis, Laura and I will head up there and keep an eye on things. They have a good viewscreen and sensors, so if we see anything going wrong, we'll immediately drop in. Or at least, with the people who can make a hard drop like that."
Riley grinned with a nod. "Sounds good, I'll see you down there."
The wind whipped Riley's face as he fell.
Falling was feeling pretty familiar to him at this point.
Outpost Rose didn't look all that different than how he remembered it. It had the central command center and four surrounding buildings, some of which must've been newly constructed. Chrono must've used some of his leftover schematics for building the outpost back up after Golem had wrecked it. Each wall had its own machine-gun emplacement, which worried Riley the most. He didn't see any newly created troops down in the streets, so they didn't have anyone patrolling.
Even as Riley plummeted toward the outpost, all he could remember was how he and Taurus had fought side by side not long ago. Alliances were always in flux. Enemies were not always enemies from one day to the next.
"Trooper One, can you hear me?" Riley asked over the updraft assailing him.
There was no response.
"Come on, please be in range. This whole idea fails if you're not down there."
Riley squinted as he stared down at the outpost. He didn't have the system to do a hard scan of the area and give him a good idea of his distance to the ground. He just had to hope that the fall wasn't going to hurt him too much. His boots should cover his landing. Hopefully. Unfortunately, despite the range of the beam teleporters that the crystal ship had, he still had a long way to drop. A distance greater than what the boots could handle.
He wasn't looking forward to the landing. If all went according to plan, then it shouldn't matter how much damage he took, as long as it didn't kill him.
"Trooper One, are you there?" Riley asked again, keeping an open line on his cell in his pocket. It was the only transmitter he had, and he knew the range was limited, but he couldn't gauge distance as he fell.
There was still no response.
The machine gun emplacements shifted all at once. All four of them turned and oriented toward the sky. There was a brief delay before a torrent of bullets flooded his vicinity.
Some of the bullets flew by, while others managed to hit him. He took 10 damage from the bullets, but now that he knew he was in their range, he triggered Chrono's power.
With a mere thought, Riley stopped time in a local bubble. The bubble was just big enough to encompass the outpost and freeze the turrets. The bullets were also frozen in the air and would remain there until the time bubble dissipated.
Riley had just over three seconds until the effect stopped. He was using that time to get in closer to the outpost. He was still out of range—if Trooper One was even still down there. It was also a possibility that a low-tier jammer had been set up to mess with communications.
When he'd discussed the plan with Chrono, Chrono had said that Trooper One was still in charge and that he’d actually overlooked the fact that the NPC wasn't under the base's direct command. Hopefully, Taurus and his forces would overlook that little fact as well. If Trooper One had been relieved of his permissions, then this was going to go pretty poorly. He had a lot riding on Taurus's lack of due diligence.
Knowing that the time bubble was about to pop, he used Amber's powers and spawned the amber gel with his left arm. He created a rounded shield and maneuvered it so that it could intercept some of the fire he was about to take, once the turrets re-acquired him as a target.
The time bubble broke.
Bullets continued their trajectory through the air. The turrets stopped firing for a few moments as they shifted and spun back up to let loose another barrage of bullets. Riley had to wait for Chrono's power to go off of cooldown, indicated by the icon in his vision.
It didn't take long until the bullets smacked into the amber gel that he was using to shield himself. He'd hardened the gel, as he'd seen Amber do in the past. Dozens of bullets pelted the orange shield, causing it to crack and break. Parts of it fragmented, allowing bullets to hit him and then dematerialize after the impact. His health dropped in tiny increments with each hit. The amber shield morphed and re-hardened to seal the sections that fragmented, but the bullets coming from four turrets were more than it could handle, and lots of them were striking through and stinging him all over. Plenty of bullets were missing completely. The turrets had an accuracy rating based on distance, and he knew that he was still just a little outside their optimal range. But with each passing second, they would gain a boost in accuracy.
The cooldown for Chrono's powers ticked off, and Riley immediately triggered another time-stop. He needed to get closer. But he couldn't speak to Trooper One during a time-stop. He continued to fall feet-first. He was aimed for the command center, as it was actually the tallest building at the outpost and he'd receive the least amount of fall damage if he landed on it.
Again, the time-bubble dispersed.
"Trooper One! Disable the defenses!" he blurted out.
The gunfire from the turrets subsided briefly, but they were quick to re-acquire their target.
Riley could hear the din of the barrage of bullets as they left the barrels. His amber shield was once again assaulted by a multitude of impacts. The regeneration ability of Amber's powers was too slow to keep up with so many bullets. It actually made Riley realize that large amounts of small hits might be one of Amber's key weaknesses.
"Trooper One! Disable the defenses!" he called out again.
There was no response. Just the repeated cracks of the Amber shield and the impacts of bullets dematerializing against his body, causing red flashes in his vision. He could feel each hit. It was like being pinched in real life. Which was a lot better than the sharper sting it would've caused if he was still back in the Hellions expansion days.
He was running out of time. His health was taking too many hits and his landing was going to cost him a chunk of health.
The fear of losing his character now of all times became quite real to him. He wasn't expecting the turrets to land so many hits. He had hoped Amber's powers would've been able to stop more of the bullets.
He triggered his next time-stop and descended closer toward the ground. He was almost there. He had hoped to signal Trooper One much sooner, but he wasn't getting any response at all. His mind raced with the options ahead of him. If Trooper One wasn't in command, or if he couldn't hear him, then he had to infiltrate the base and signal the crystal ship on his own. He had to break into one of the buildings and get out of line of sight of the turrets. There still weren't any minions in view, but he had to imagine that Taurus's forces were inside somewhere. They had to know that he was there, but only a short amount of time had passed so far.
The time-stop dissipated and he was given those precious few moments to act before he was assailed by more bullets.
"Trooper One! Disable the defenses!" he called out again.
The ground raced up to meet him. He pulled his arm up to block the bullets from two of the angles that he was exposed to. Upon impact with the command center's roof, his health took a hard hit of 426 damage, which caused his vision to flash even brighter than when he'd been hit by the bullets. This left him at 502 hitpoints. Which was far fewer than what he hoped to be at upon landing.
He turned, prepared to leap off the building to escape the onslaught of bullets, but in that brief moment, he looked over to the nearest wall and saw that the tur
ret wasn't reacquiring him as a target.
"Defenses disabled, sir," came Trooper One's voice.
Riley let out a sigh of relief.
"T-One, how many other players are in the outpost besides myself?" Riley quickly asked.
"There are five within the printer facility, one in the storage and two outside."
"Any in the command center?" Riley asked.
"No, I'm currently alone, sir. But you might have company soon."
"Can you give me permissions to control the facility's system?" Riley asked.
"Absolutely," Trooper One said, and a moment later, he got a little exclamation mark in the bottom right of his vision.
"System, are you there?" he asked, still using his cell to link with the outpost.
"I am," came the digital womanly voice of the outpost. Riley certainly preferred it to the hellion one.
"Send a message to the crystal ship in my contacts. Tell them 'drop!'"
"Message sent," the system replied.
Riley took in a quick glance at his surroundings. "Trooper One, can you remove anyone else's access to the outpost, other than myself and you? Can you set me as the administrator?"
There was a brief pause. In that time, Riley quickly gestured to open his inventory. He selected one of the two vitacans, which quickly materialized in his hand. He wasted no time in drinking it. The vitacan would regenerate .5% of his health every second for one-hundred seconds and also provide .025% energy regeneration per second. He desperately needed the boost, if something were to still go wrong.
"All the permissions on other players have been dropped, sir," said Trooper One.
"Great, now I need you to set the guilds Bunker Brawlers, The Gilded, The Royals and The Vigilant as friendlies, with all others as hostile."
"Done, sir."
A moment later, the four machine-gun emplacements on the walls whirred back to life. It didn't take more than a couple seconds for them to shift and direct their attention toward the ground. Each turret fired.
Riley didn't have a method of interfacing directly with the base yet. He needed to get inside the command center, but there were still some players that he needed to worry about. But they would probably be more concerned about their own survival now than hunting him down.
Riley noticed where the turrets were firing into the base and shifted around so that he couldn't be seen at those angles. The command center's roof was a square at the base with several floors. There were then different box-like compartments, some taller than others, that stretched up from the command center's structure. These boxes tended to hold modules and other devices, such as the base's scanners or transmitters. He was currently hiding behind one of them.
"System, is there a way inside the command center from the roof?" he asked over the open cell line.
"Yes," said the system. "It's at the center of the roof. Should I go ahead and open its elevator?"
"Yes, do that," said Riley. "And there's still no players in the command center, right?"
"Correct," the system replied.
Riley made his way to the center of the roof, where a square outline was lit in soft green lights. He stepped inside the square. "Take me down," he said.
The panel descended into the structure. Once his head had cleared the roof, another panel closed above. He descended through the various floors in the building. He passed by an open floor, along with the one with the teleporter. Then finally, he ended up in the one with the command chair. He made his way over to it immediately, already spotting its current occupant, Trooper One.
"I need that chair, if you don't mind," Riley said as he approached. There were no other NPCs or players in sight.
"Yes, sir," Trooper One said as he promptly got up and stepped aside. He picked up his rifle and stood guard.
Riley took the command chair and wasted no time in bringing up a scan of the base and the surrounding area.
There was a noticeable indicator far above the base. It was lit in green, which meant that it could only be the crystal ship. Four green dots were seconds from landing within the base. He wasn't sure which of his allies they were, but along with the base defenses, they should be able to clear Taurus's forces.
"System, the player Taurus and the player Thrash. They're not here currently, are they?"
"Neither of those players are currently at this location, as far as I'm able to discern," the system replied.
"Then they must not view this outpost as high priority, which makes sense. I'm surprised they left any players here at all," Riley mused. "System, do you know what guilds the players are from, that were in the base before I arrived?"
"The players were from the following guilds: The Thrashers and The Tumultuous."
Riley nodded. "Alright, so a few of Thrash's people, and one of the coalition guilds," he said, mostly to himself. "Do we have any minions to use?"
"No, but I could print some for you, if you want," the system advised.
"No, that's fine, I'm sure they can handle it," Riley murmured as he quickly glanced around the rendered map, making sure that things were going well with the hostile players in the base. He saw that the four green indicators for his allies had all grouped up and were now making their way to where the hostiles were gathered. He had to assume—or at least hope, that the four of them were some of their higher level players.
"System, are you able to guide them around out there?" Riley asked.
"I can, and I am," the system replied.
"Did someone install new modules for communication outside?" Riley asked.
"Yes. The player Chrono previously updated some of this site's equipment to its current standards."
"Gotcha," Riley said as he then tapped some of the holographic buttons before him. He materialized one of the command bands so that he could control the base remotely if need be. He placed it on his arm and then went back to monitoring the situation. As he kept an eye on the hostiles, he also opened up the readout for how their resource stores were looking. Of the four outside structures, one was a printer, another was an excavator. The excavator had been updated, and the two other structures were both expanded storage buildings, which allowed them to store even more resources than they had previously when he was here. Chrono must've done a lot of updating when he was last at the location.
Riley tried to multitask as best he could. He wanted to get a loose idea of their capabilities with this base. Would it do what they needed? Did it have enough? Did more modules need to be built? Or was this just a waste of time? Would Golem continue to plow through the game, destroying and absorbing everything it could?
Riley shook himself from his thoughts. His eyes darted across the map, watching as the four green dots intercepted the remaining hostile players. They were making quick work of them.
Three more green dots came down from the descending crystal ship. It didn't take them long to land. Once they had, they moved in on one of the other locations that the four others hadn't been yet. Riley could only assume that the team of three didn't have the capability to take as much of a fall as the initial team. But the ship had lowered much further by this point.
The two teams from the ship appeared to be doing a solid job, as one by one, the indicators for the hostile players vanished.
Before long, the crystal ship reached transport beam range, and dozens of green dots lit up around the inside of the base.
No hostile indicators remained.
The base was theirs.
Chapter 33: Pondering Plans
Riley stood a few feet away from the command chair. Its current occupant was Laura. She hadn't set the interface to private, so they were all able to see the screens and maps she was looking at.
Chrono stood nearby, his arms crossed.
Gella leaned back against the nearest wall, easily still within earshot.
Aegis and Ava stood side by side, both staring at the map that Laura had brought up.
Aaron stood beside Riley. He was still in his human form
. It had always been a little disconcerting to be around his Weevil form, when Riley had so much trauma tied up in the event of his previous character's death. He much preferred to see Aaron in his hero body. It was very similar to his real-life one. Riley on the other hand, had only gotten some of the facial features the same for his own character.
"So we've sent the message to Warcry," said Laura. "Golem shouldn't be able to move the gate location. At least, we don't think?" she asked as she glanced around.
"Who knows?" said Chrono. "It might be able to, but if that's the case, then we have no plan and this whole thing is a waste."
Laura nodded. "So let's act on the idea that it can't move the main portal that it's bringing forces in through. Obviously it can move the smaller ones, but it has no reason to, if it wants to continue to protect that base."
The command room doors whooshed open.
Brenda walked inside and headed right over to them. "Alright, it's all set up. You guys got your money. It's not much, but it might help us out some. Sage wouldn't admit it, but I know he feels bad about everything not working out the way he'd planned."
"So we have a terminal to access the market?" Aaron asked.
Laura nodded. "Yeah, it's set up on the third floor. You're pretty familiar with that, aren't you?" she asked, then looked to Chrono. "You too, I imagine?"
"Yeah, I used it a lot," said Aaron.
Chrono simply nodded.
"How much did Sage give us?" Riley asked as he looked to Brenda.
Brenda reached up and scratched at the side of her head. "About ten thousand GD worth of SC."
"What?" Ava blurted out. "Ten thousand? He just has that laying around?"
Brenda rolled her eyes. "Yeah. We…come from a well-off family. I play games for the heck of it, ‘cause real life is boring. Sage plays to feel like he's in control. Neither of us play for the money."
"But if you guys are so well-off, why don't you have a ton of awesome gear?" Riley asked, lifting a brow at Brenda.
She shrugged. "Sage bought some stuff for his character. I've bought something from time to time when it looked like a nice boost. So the two of us were actually decently equipped. But until Bastions, it didn't seem all that worthwhile to spend tons of money on the game. Besides, the auto market didn't really exist until recently. And going around to the market and perusing items was always a huge hassle. I just wanted to level up and hunt monsters and stuff. If I wanted to buy stuff all the time, I'd just go to a store in the real world."