Bastions

by Jeff Sproul

  Everyone just kind of stared at Brenda for a few seconds. Laura was the first to actually move. Of the small gathering of players, she'd known Brenda the longest and had already been familiar with her well-off status in life.

  "With the influx of funds and the resources that are loaded up in storage, we have enough materials to create a nice little force for ourselves," said Laura. "But we only have the schematics that are here at the base."

  "We don't have the sky guard?" Riley asked.

  Chrono shook his head. "I printed the sky guards at one of our other facilities, then brought the drive to HQ. So it's gone."

  "So what are you able to make for the upcoming engagement?" asked Gella. "I can support you with my ship, but only in a limited capacity. It's meant more for stealth and transportation than assault."

  "We can make troopers and rifles," said Laura. "It's not much, but with my powers to split into a hundred copies, and everyone else thrown into the mix, I think we have enough for another assault."

  "You took Golem by surprise before. It knows that we know where it is," said Gella. "It's going to be much more defended. Are these troopers very strong?"

  "They're probably some of the lowest tier troops that we can make," said Laura. "But we can make a whole bunch of them. Or at least, enough to spread out and max everyone's command points. We don't have a lot of schematic capabilities here, but with the extra money, we can make some actual gear for each individual trooper so they can do increased damage. We're just focusing on damage for the moment, because it's almost certain that they'll die really quickly once Golem's forces get into melee with them."

  "Hopefully Warcry can pull some troops for us," said Aaron, looking to Riley.

  "I'm hoping too, but she was pretty adamant about having to keep out of the fight the last time," said Riley. "She was really into holding onto her democratic system for the alliance."

  "Couldn't she have come herself, though?" asked Aegis. "I mean, I've heard about Warcry, but I don't know much about her. You say she's a good friend of yours?"

  "Yeah," said Riley. "We haven't spoken as much recently, but we're on pretty good terms, I'd say. But she's managing a whole alliance. She's kind of like Sage…or at least, how Sage was. Sage would never engage in fights directly, and despite her powers being really good for groups, she's stayed back to keep things in line."

  The doors to the command room opened again. Amber Impaler and Gem came into the room. "Defenses are in place. About as much as they're going to be," said Amber.

  "Did you make some tunnels too?" asked Laura, glancing over to the two new arrivals.

  Gem nodded. "Yeah, I planted proximity explosives around the perimeter on the outside, while Domi set up zones. And then the hellions were digging out the tunnels, which I then trapped as well. I'm tapped out. If I want to use my powers any further, I've got to fizzle some of the traps I've already planted."

  "You're not planning on staying here and taking a defensive posture, are you?" asked Gella.

  "No, but we need time to prepare," said Laura. "We don't want to lose the only foothold we have. There are still potential hostile players, along with that diamond ship that blew up our city. Oh, and then there's Golem. If it tries to attack, we're going to be hard pressed to defend."

  "We need to act quickly," said Gella. "Golem is likely to reinforce that location with as many troops and defenses as it can build."

  "So what is our plan?" Amber asked as he came in closer. "We got a base. Now what? Even though we got abandoned before, we still had a decent force down there in the tunnels. A bigger force than what we have now, and that includes Gella's troops and anything we might try and whip up in the printer. We can only make troopers, right? They're not that strong, even if we fit them out with all the mods we can buy."

  "The troopers will be able to throw down a significant amount of damage to help counteract Golem's superior numbers," said Riley. "Plus, every hit a trooper takes, is one we don't have to, or that we have to heal."

  "Yeah, I get that," Amber sighed and shook his head. "But what's our goal here? It sounds like we're about to do the same thing we've been doing, which hasn't been working at all. We got a base, we have resources, but we don't have anything close to a plan, do we?"

  Everyone glanced around at each other. Then, Riley and Aaron exchanged looks.

  "I still don't think we should recommend it," said Aaron. "It's not a great plan."

  "What else are we going to do?" Riley asked as he looked at Aaron. "As much as I hate to ever agree with Amber, he's right. We can't just smash into Golem again without…a gimmick."

  "It's a bad gimmick," said Aaron as he rolled his eyes.

  "What are you two talking about?" asked Laura. "If you've got something to share, speak up. ‘Cause we have nothing and time is ticking."

  Riley sighed. "Well, Aaron should be able to control Golem's forces. Right?"

  "I'm pretty sure I can," said Aaron. "It was just always more effective for me to use my Weevil form to do damage, as opposed to trying to turn their forces on each other, since mostly they were foot soldiers."

  "How does controlling one of Golem troops do much of anything for us?" Chrono asked skeptically.

  "Because…Riley's plan is to control its portal spiders," said Aaron.

  "How many do you think you can control at once?" asked Laura.

  "Probably one," said Aaron. "I've never been able to control two boss-level monsters at once, and those spiders were pretty large. So, I'm going to safely say just one."

  "I don't see how this hugely benefits us," said Chrono.

  "Because I can use Aaron's power too," said Riley. "That allows us to control two of its portal spiders and take them out of action. Its reinforcements will be cut in half, coming from those spiders."

  "But the whole point of this is to destroy the gate. Do we still have time for that?" asked Aegis. "I don't think the gate was active before, but it very well might be when we hit them again."

  "The original plan was to take the site from Golem," said Chrono. "We seize the site, we reinforce it from further attack, then we use the gate ourselves to launch an attack on Mage World to destroy its gate located there."

  "That was your initial plan?" Gella asked. "That's quite a tall order. We have tried assaulting its gate. It is not an easy task. It has eighty-thousand hitpoints and is always incredibly well-protected. It sounds as though we have one insurmountable objective, preceding an even more impossible one."

  "Well, our hope was to build up a force of players that would've gotten the job done," said Chrono. "But our circumstances have drastically changed now."

  "If we don't destroy the Mage World gate, then Golem continues to assault Sigil Online," said Riley. "There is no plan if we can't seize the gate here and then activate it to assault the other gate."

  "I'm really confused, what's the difference in these gates? Are they the same thing?" Ava asked.

  "The gate in Mage World is like standing at the edge of a lake and throwing a rock as far as you can," said Gella. "The lake is Sigil Online. The rock is whatever gets sent from Mage World. You can throw as many rocks as you want, but they're not going to land in the same place."

  Then, Chrono spoke up. "The gate here in Sigil is more like an actual portal from one exact point to another. Apparently, the gate is set up to reach Mage World already. It just hasn't been turned on because the resource requirement is extensive. Once it's on, it'll require continued resources to keep it running. We don't have that right now, so it'll take some time to build up. We have to worry about taking the site first, then trying to figure out how to actually hit Mage World."

  "But Golem is just going to keep throwing rocks," said Riley. "Even if we take the site, we have Golem and we have that diamond ship that destroyed the city. We're in a downward spiral, even if we take the site. We need a solid plan for getting that gate running."

  "We could buy the necessary resources to power it," said Brenda. "We probably have m
ore funds than we can use with this facility. That base we're attacking probably has some schematics, so…I'm sure we can use theirs to make better stuff. So, let's save some of what Sage sent us. We take the base, we start up a remote market really quick, we power the gate for enough time to get into Mage World and back and…ta-da. Easy."

  "We're going to be hurting after taking the site," said Chrono.

  "I'm still not a hundred percent sure that we can even take the site," said Laura. "At least, not without a significant amount of help and a sizeable amount of extra players."

  "It's a shame we don't have more allies," said Riley, glancing to Chrono, then to Brenda.

  "Don't look at me," said Brenda with narrowed eyes. "I didn't create Golem, or put us into this mess. My brother had one of the biggest alliances in this game. It's not his fault, or mine that Taurus and Thrash sided with outside forces against us. We were doing just fine till Golem arrived."

  "We have to make do with what we have," said Chrono.

  "Should we try and put out a news blast, or something?" asked Laura. "Try and let everyone know what we're doing and maybe some players will show up to help? Surely the destruction of Crimson Alliance has woken people up."

  "Yeah, it let people know that there's a guild with a very powerful weapon that they all need to be on the lookout for," said Chrono. "It's just going to make people be even more reserved now. A weapon of that power? People are going to invest in sensor upgrades and any sort of warning systems they can get. Half will invest in weapons to deal with a threat very quickly, while the other half will do what The Rook Alliance have done. They'll make a big shield to hide behind."

  Gella had been silent for a couple minutes, but now stepped forward. "I just received a message from my ship. One of the scanning devices we left at the gate facility started detecting readings similar to those of the initial gate powering up in Mage World. It looks like Golem has started the power-up process for the gate. No matter what we do, it'll be online by the time we can mount an attack on it."

  "Then we're definitely on the clock," said Aegis. "We need to pull something together, right now."

  Chrono, Laura, Gella and Aegis continued to discuss potential plans. Riley listened in, but he was already drifting off on his own ideas. He considered every player they had left. From the hellions under Chrono's command, to The Vigilant, to The Bunker Brawlers. They could stop time. They could create duplicates of themselves. They could lay down heavy explosions for crowd control damage or pick off individual targets with high damage. They could even use Arbiter to sneak in if they got line of sight on the portal spiders. There were members who were good at placing traps, such as Gem and Dominion. There were hellions that could tunnel or form hardened exoskeletons to prevent damage.

  Riley considered them all, one by one. Then, he spoke up. "System, can you contact Glint and tell her to come to the command room?"

  The system spoke a moment later. "Message sent."

  Chrono and Laura glanced over to Riley as Aegis spoke to Gella.

  "Something on your mind?" Laura asked as she looked over to Riley.

  "Yeah, but…I need to check something first," he replied as he stood near Aaron, waiting for Glint to get there.

  It took a couple minutes for her to arrive. The command room doors whooshed open and there stood the silver-haired woman, Glint. She glanced around the room, then focused on Riley. "You needed something?" she asked.

  Riley turned to her and thought for a moment. He knew it was going to be a touchy subject, but he hoped with the high stakes they were under that hopefully she wouldn't mind divulging some things. "Do you have the ability to go invisible? Actually, more importantly, can you make people around you invisible?"

  Glint's lips parted. She wasn't forthcoming with an immediate response as she sighed and rested her hands on her hips. After a few seconds of her staring at the floor, she nodded. "Yeah, I can do that. I thought I'd kept that a secret."

  Riley smirked. "I've noticed odd things about you at times. Vanishing after fights in the Hellions expansion. Appearing suddenly in Bastions. Even back in Hellions, I suspected you might've hit tier three and gained some new abilities. You probably have more than just the invisibility, right?"

  Glint nodded. "Sure do. And yeah. I guess since we're laying everything out in the open, I did hit tier three back in Hellions. So, did you need invisibility for something?"

  Riley looked to Aaron, then to the rest of the group. "I have another plan…again."

  The Gilded's crystalline ship happened to be named 'Needle.' Gella had described it as a joke about finding a needle in a haystack, since the ship had considerable cloaking power. The Needle loomed a hundred feet above the ground, just outside the range of Golem's scanning potential near the compound that housed the gate that led to Mage World Online.

  Riley, Aaron, Laura, Chrono, Gella, Glint, Aegis, Ava and two of Gella's subordinates all stood around the command deck with their attention focused on the cloudy glass doorway. A few seconds later, it slid open.

  The first thing that came inside looked like an oil-drum or a barrel on a base with four wheels. Then, a very familiar face appeared. She looked just as she had when Riley first met her when Sigil Online began. She wore a pair of black cargo pants, black boots and a red t-shirt. On both her arms were coiling red tribal tattoos. Her hair was red and shaved down on one side.

  Warcry had a big grin on her face as she pushed the wheeled, barrel-like object ahead of her while also pulling one behind her. Before anyone could greet her, she spoke up. "I gotta say, when I woke up this morning and thought about all the things I needed to do online today, I didn't consider the possibility that we'd be fighting for the survival of the whole game, let me tell ya. Now, I warned my other guild leaders about what was going on, but nobody wanted to lift a finger to help. And I'll also admit that I didn't make much of a fuss about it. The democracy spoke, and I listened."

  Riley stood there, a smile on his face as he watched Warcry wheel the two sizeable barrels into the command room.

  Gella's brows lifted. She then pointed at the two barrels. "Wait, are those the devices Relinquisher requested?"

  Warcry looked around the room, then nodded. "They sure are."

  "Shouldn't you have left them on the ground?" Gella asked. "I had my people transport you up here, but you didn't need to bring those up with you. How…volatile are they?"

  "Oh, really volatile," Warcry answered as she looked Gella up and down. "You're the Mage World lady Riley mentioned? I'm Warcry. But yeah, if you care about this ship, then we need to get things going. You don't want to keep these things within a foot of your ship. One point of damage and boom! How many hitpoints does this vessel have? Because each of these very, very expensive devices will detonate for eighty-five thousand damage each. Which you said was enough to kill a gate, right?"

  Gella's eyes somehow managed to get wider. "Well, if both of those explode, this ship would cease to exist. That's for certain. I suggest we get this mission underway as soon as possible. I want those things off this ship." She then looked to Riley.

  Riley met Gella's gaze and then looked to Warcry with a big grin. "Good to see you again, Warcry. I take it that nobody joined you on your way out here? Sure didn't take you long."

  "Well, you painted a pretty bleak picture and I figured you weren't making things up," Warcry said as she leaned against one of the barrels. "So I had one of my guild mates whip these up and I took our fastest hover-vehicle and zoomed right out here. I grabbed a few other things on the way out. I still have that weird feeling that I forgot something important, but it's whatever. I got the two devices you needed, and I should be able to pull off my own spectacle. This is the end of Sigil Online, yeah?"

  Nearly the entire room nodded in unison as Warcry looked around. "Well, great. If the game dies, then I won't have to manage a very stressful alliance anymore. And if it doesn't… Well, then I'll still be in charge of one of the biggest alliances in the game. So�
��win win, really."

  "How heavy are those things?" Riley asked. "I guess we'll have to carry them, since it's dirt and some sand all the way there."

  Warcry shrugged. "Not heavy at all, if you carry them individually. You'd only need about ten Power, maybe fifteen. I didn't really check. They're not that heavy. Just annoying for a single person to work with both. Easier to push them around. So…you and…Aaron, will be taking them then? I imagine your forces out in the hold of the ship are going to be your distraction during all this?"

  Riley nodded. "That's the plan. Glint cloaks Aaron and I, and the three of us head into the compound and straight for the gate. According to Gella's readings, it's currently active. We've been monitoring the site and Golem has carved out tunnels coming up from the underground section where the gate actually is. Instead of walling itself off, Golem created a main passage to deploy troops faster. We think that it assumes it can't be stopped at this point, so it's just trying to push as many troops into the area as it can. We all thought we were going to have more time, but Golem—and a few other things—have been stumping us every step of the way."

  "I see," Warcry murmured. "And Glint can keep you hidden from Golem's scanner abilities?"

  Glint stepped forward. "Without a doubt. It's just a matter of not bumping into any of Golem's forces as we move through the area. Which is why we need a significant diversion to pull as many troops from the underground as possible."

  "Alright," Warcry murmured, then spoke up more clearly. "Well, how about you hold off on your side of things for the moment. When Riley's little saboteur group heads down, I'll join them. You do your invisible infiltration thing and I'll draw Golem's forces out."