The Outlaw (Phantom Server: Book #2)

by Andrei Livadny

  This standard-issue scanner was excellent. I kept receiving data from Novitsky whose gear sensors could pick up the vaguest smells imperceptible otherwise. Actually, that's how insects perceive their surroundings. I received a funny picture that depicted smells as colorful plumes of air emitting from their respective sources, their hue depending on their intensity and composition. Shame it only worked within a range of thirty to fifty feet.

  Piercing Vision worked much better but unfortunately, I didn't have a nanite colony to activate it.

  “Toxins,” Novitsky mouthed.

  Instinctively I slowed down.

  He was right. The smell was coming from around the bend. My Synaps had yet failed to detect any mobs but they could be camouflaging, adjusting their body temperature to that of the surrounding cliffs.

  I stole toward the bend and took a peek around it. “All clear.”

  I forwarded them a picture of a body sprawled on the rocks. It lay in a broken position impossible for that of a human: one arm dislocated, the whole body seemingly snapped in two. No wonder the air stank of neurotoxins. Daugoths had paralyzed the poor wretch, then sucked him dry.

  Three shadows lurked further on. A pack of mobs? I gestured to my group to stop while I waited for my Synaps to collect data and draw a picture. It took it too long to scan organic life. Never mind. I'd have to upgrade it at the first opportunity.

  Having received the image, I cautiously stepped back.

  A Medium Daugoth. Xenomorph. Level 31. Life: 1960/2000.

  “Novitsky,” I pointed to a ledge on the cliff, “I want you to climb up there and keep still.”

  The gorge was narrow — thirty feet from one wall to the other. The foot of the creviced cliffs was littered with boulders. Foggs and Vandal took cover behind them, prepared to shower any mobs with crossfire.

  I made a quick estimate of my own firepower. My weapon's DpS allowed me to fell a mob in 4.5 seconds, provided I didn't miss. I couldn't kill them all at once, though: they were way too fast. Which meant I would have some running to do.

  I synchronized my force shield with the Electric Storm's rate of fire. That seemed to be it. Time to get rolling!

  I stepped out around the bend. The Daugoths didn't seem to have noticed me. Why? My armor's phototropic properties were similar to Stealth, but not quite. The mobs were less than fifty feet away and still they didn't aggro me. One of them sat up anxiously, then relaxed again. How weird.

  I took aim. I just couldn't take it any longer. The sooner we smoked them, the better.

  A long burst of fire ripped through the dark. One of the spiders emitted a piercing screech. The other two came for me. I kept firing, ripping their chitin armor apart. Its pieces slapped against the surrounding cliffs amid fountains of green slime.

  My fire had considerably affected them. Their life bars dropped a good 60%. All sported Blood Loss debuffs as well as Mortal Wounds and Damaged Limbs. Their movements grew unsteady; their enthusiasm had waned. One of them had collapsed, apparently unable to scramble back to its feet. Excellent.

  “Above you!” Novitsky's scream rattled the headphones. My target monitor rippled with a great many tags, all behind and above us!

  Retreat, fast! I hadn't had a bad pull like this in a long while. How could I have missed the mobs lurking on top of the cliffs? The thought hadn't even crossed my mind! The creatures thought nothing of the fifty-foot drop: they simply rappelled, gliding down their gossamer cobwebs.

  I retreated to where the gorge broadened slightly and showered the mobs with fire, pulling aggro to myself. How many of them were there? My biohazard sensor was off the scale with neurotoxin warnings; my force shield was aglow with flashes, absorbing damage from the hundreds of venomous quills. I shot down a few Daugoths who then dropped to their death, their bodies bouncing off the rocks. The others mechanically kept aggroing. They scurried along the cliff tops to drop onto me, then immediately recoil, stopped by the scorching force shield. That's when I needed all of my state-of-the-art suit's power!

  The mobs kept coming for us. The wounded ones hissed as they crawled aside, leaving slimy trails in their wake. They weren't my problem: Vandal and Foggs had already joined in the fight. I could hear the howling of their rifles and the dry chatter of Novitsky's pulse gun. Good boy. He hadn't let me down.

  My Electric Storm blasted non-stop. But my force shield began to give up the ghost, losing power under the heavy mass of moving bodies. The weapon's mechanisms clicked rapidly, barely managing to replace micro nuclear batteries in time. Then one of the guns stopped. In a moment, the other one followed suit as the Daugoths had breached the shield and began tearing the weapon apart. Slashed by their blows, the cables connecting the two guns were the first to disintegrate.

  The deformed mounting clattered to the ground. I whipped out my assault rifle and began clearing a path with brief bursts of fire and the butt of my gun. Shooting non-stop, I broke out of their trap and leapt aside, pressing my back against a cliff.

  You should have seen it. The twilight was ripped apart by the constant flashing of boosted fire. Dozens of injured mobs were running amok, struggling against the Mortal Wound debuffs. I kept pulling aggro to myself, shooting down the more brazen ones who tried to attack as they leaped onto me. Three more down...

  Shadows flashed overhead just out of my field of vision. A deafening blow knocked me off my feet. My force shield collapsed as the last set of micro nuclear batteries went flat. I tried to jump back to my feet. As if! Sensing their chance, the Daugoths sank their mandibles into my armor, trying to bite through it. I could feel a creature's jaws close around my wrist, crushing the cargonite.

  I'd dropped the rifle. With my free hand I whipped out my handgun and loosed the clip into the nearest mob's head. Still, the damage wasn't enough.

  Green blood gushed everywhere. A golden shimmer enveloped me.

  You've received a new level!

  The pressure to my right hand weakened as the mob's jaws slackened: a burst of boosted fire had sliced right through him.

  Wheezing, I wriggled my way out from under the heap of agonizing bodies.

  Novitsky helped me. Vandal and Foggs stood shoulder to shoulder shielding us, dusting the gorge's recesses with fire.

  The golden shimmer enveloped us again. Five or six mobs, bleeding and crippled with debuffs, attempted to flee. No such luck: our bullets got them in the end.

  * * *

  We stood there exhausted, gasping and trying to catch our breaths. We didn't say a word to each other. Vandal was brushing slimy scraps of flesh off his gear, wincing in disgust.

  “That was close,” Foggs’ hoarse voice summed up the combat. “We gave it our all.”

  I nodded. It was only going to get tougher. We had to give these gorges some thought. Could we even pass this way?

  “Novitsky, check these things out,” I said. “They might drop something useful.”

  His eyes glistened feverishly. Had he OD'ed on stimpacks again? Hardly. He seemed to be high on adrenaline.

  I climbed back to my feet. The sight of the slime-covered Vandal gave me an idea.

  Foggs tensed up. “Where're you going?”

  “Just to have a look what's there,” I activated a stealth module.

  “Zander, give it a break,” he tried to reason with me. “You did say these are test models. You can't trust them!”

  “You wait here. I want to check something. I'm not going to take any stupid risks.”

  Around the bend the gorge began to narrow, gradually becoming a fissure between the cliffs. I walked softly, trying not to make any noise and watching my Synaps feedback like a hawk.

  About fifty feet further, the strip of sky above had disappeared. The cliffs closed overhead. A weak glow up front revealed a growth of phosphorescent moss framing a cave entrance.

  No mobs here.

  Did that mean that the three mobs I'd attacked had been guarding the access to their lair?

  Warily I stepped closer and t
ook a peek inside. The cave was rather large. Occasional patches of the same moss shimmered on the walls. A few Daugoths rested on the floor.

  I walked in. You think I was nuts? Oh, no. This was a well-calculated risk. The nearest Daugoth was about fifteen feet away from me. I could see his antennae twitch. The combat had left me reeking with toxins. In the Daugoth's mind, I was naught but a whiff of outside air.

  The stealth worked fine. I walked around the guard and continued along the wall, giving the spiders a wide berth. They were about thirty there, not counting the behemoth lurking in the cave's recesses:

  A female of a Large Daugoth. Xenomorph. Level 43. Life 20,000/20,000

  I froze and took a good look around. Mopping up the lair just for some loot and XP would be too much risk. I'd only ventured in here for one reason. I had to find out whether Kathryn had been part of the group.

  I'd found four of their bodies — two in mercenary gear and two others wearing research suits — by the cave's far wall.

  The Daugoths must have used it to store supplies. Thick sheets of cobwebs swayed in the air. Several pieces of Dargian armor gleamed on the floor. The Daugoths must have sucked their owners dry ages ago. The armor was dull, the heaped alien remains overtaken by moss.

  Two Daugoths headed in my direction. I shrank back into a dark crevice and read the raiders' tags from there using my Synaps sensors.

  Two of them were still alive!

  Rick. Level 42. Mechanic. Life 24/4180. Paralyzed.

  Kathryn. Level 49. Exobiologist. Life 73/4650. Paralyzed.

  I'd seen enough. I retraced my tracks out of the cave. Once in the open, I just stood there catching my breath.

  * * *

  I went back to my group and clued them in, attaching a video file.

  “Impossible,” Vandal said. “Zander, no offence. To mop up the lair we need to control the mobs and we can't. You saw it yourself, these spiders hunt in packs. No way you can pull them.”

  Foggs nodded his agreement. “We'll have to leave. We'll do another ten levels and go back.”

  “No, we won't,” I said. “We must rescue Kathryn. She's a player, not some quest NPC.”

  “She is indeed,” they agreed, thoughtful.

  Novitsky took no part in our discussion. He was too busy gutting the spiders and removing some leathery pouches from their corpses.

  “The gorge becomes very narrow just in front of the cave,” I already had the inklings of a plan. “It's a few feet wide, no more. The ceiling is low too.”

  Foggs didn't look too optimistic. “Zander, we just can't contain them.”

  I couldn't agree more with both of them. A standard approach wouldn't work here. But we had technology on our side. “Didn't you say we should think out of the box?”

  “I did and I stand by it! I just can't see how we can do it!”

  I started the video of the combat: the Daugoths swarming out toward me. I zoomed in and slowed the tape down. Now you could clearly see my large calibers rip through their bodies, leaving debuff tags over the mobs' heads. A burst of fire ripped a few limbs off: these mobs couldn't catch up with the rest now, let alone scale the gorge's walls. The video continued with a close-up of a crit cleaving a mob's head in two. He still had about 30% of life left but he couldn't get up, bleeding and losing HP.

  “They've smashed your Electric Storm, man,” Foggs insisted. “We only have forty-seven micro nuclear batteries left. Plus a separate unit to power the force shield properly, otherwise they'll breeze through it. Let's think logically,” he added moodily. “There're thirty mobs in there, not even counting their queen. You're going to lure their guards out, and then what?”

  “We'll do it in two stages. First we'll do this,” I removed my force shield belt and laid it onto a flat stretch of ground in a semicircle. I completed the circle using the other belt that Vandal had found among the dead exobiologist's gear. Then I sat the deformed remains of my Electric Storm in the middle, using the bent manipulators as a makeshift mounting.

  That got Foggs interested. “What's that you're trying to make, a turret? Protected by a force shield? Do you think you can fix the guns? But still,” his face darkened again, “they're not going to fire all by themselves.”

  “We can go back to the rover!” Vandal offered enthusiastically. “I'm sure they have some remote controls! I've been thinking: two clips of five hundred rounds each, that's 170,000 damage dealt to all those mobs. The passage is narrow, isn't it? And whoever tries to attack from above will be stopped by the force shield. Shame we won't get any XP.”

  “We don't need to go anywhere,” now was the time to demonstrate my freshly-acquired abilities. “I'll control the turret via my mind expander. The group will be getting all the XP.”

  “You think you can do it?”

  “My Synaps is geared up for fighter flying. To close the circuit remotely and shift a few servodrives is no work for it.”

  “We should place the turret closer to the cave entrance!” Vandal blurted out. “This way it can reach inside the cave! Would be a good idea to give their queen a couple of Bleedings!”

  “Yeah right,” Foggs interfered. “And what if she goes into enrage mode?”

  “So what? The entrance is too narrow. She'll never squeeze her way out. Listen, Zander,” he turned to me, “how do you plan to smoke this queen, after all?”

  I reached into my inventory and produced the diamond-shaped piece of cargonite and a five-battery power unit. I connected the two by winding a length of suit sealing tape around them.

  “And?”

  “You'll see in a moment. Just step aside, all of you. No, don't touch the Storm. Leave it all as it is.”

  I took a swing and hurled the piece of cargonite as far down the crevice as I could. Then I focused and activated Replication, choosing the item as an object suitable for utilization.

  I had less than a hundred nanites left. No one noticed anything as they flashed past us toward their target. A brilliant flash blinded us as a roaring cloud of incandescent gas escaped the crevice, leaving a deep fire-polished crater in its opposite wall.

  The entire process of making new nanobots had taken but a couple of seconds. A crimson haze flooded the gorge, rising up in a scorching vortex as all the side products escaped, leaving behind a small cloud of nanites.

  “Wow,” Vandal gasped, his stare fixed on the smoldering remains of the dead Daugoths. “Oh, Zander. This is-”

  “Wait,” I focused on the ravaged Electric Storm, visualizing the two machine guns as a turret. With a swipe of my eyes, I activated the Object Replication icon.

  The nanites received the mnemonic image and broke into several thin wisps that reached out for the spots I'd marked for them. They connected the two guns together, then straightened and reinforced the makeshift mounting. For them it was a simple job. They didn’t have to create any devices: all they had to do was join a few separate objects into one single one. Still, my men were suitably impressed.

  Durability: 500/500.

  “You're too much, dude,” Foggs glanced at the restored weapon's stats. “Mind telling us what it was?”

  “Those were nanites. First they self-replicated — that's what the chunk of cargonite and the batteries were for — and then they formed new binds and created this turret using the guns and all the rigging.”

  “Awesome,” Vandal picked up a molten cable end and studied it closely. “Why didn't you do that before?”

  “I had to save it. I can only do it twice every time. It has a twenty-four hour cooldown.”

  “So you were saving it for the spider queen?”

  I grinned back at him. “What do you think?”

  Pointless walking around with a sour face. Yes, we were all beyond exhaustion. Yes, we'd had a couple of close shaves. But we'd leveled up nicely, we'd found Kathryn and besides, this little nanite-replication trick had raised my Mnemotechnics 30%.

  Novitsky walked over to us. He'd been so absorbed in his own work he'd barely no
ticed the explosion.

  He could hardly move his feet but he was beaming. He showed me a small slime-covered pouch he'd removed from the insides of a Daugoth.

  “It contains neurotoxins with a Paralysis debuff,” he reported proudly. “Should work on any life form but the spiders themselves.”

  “That's cool,” Vandal slapped his shoulder in approval. “How many have you got?”

  “A hundred and fifty in total. A few I ruined learning how to extract them. Only I've no idea how to use them.”

  “We'll work that out,” Foggs added. My little nanite trick had cheered him up considerably. “All right, Zander? Let's go check the location!”

  * * *

  We didn't venture too close to the cave entrance. Hiding behind a large chunk of cliff, we held council. I forwarded them a close-up of the potential approach routes; besides, all of them had access to the video file I'd made during my little recon op.

  “How are we sure they will come out of their lair?” Vandal asked, doubtful.

  “Oh, they will,” I said, loading micro nuclear batteries into the guns.

  “Normally, mobs never leave their dungeons. Or are these different?”

  “Normally, any dungeon is a separate location by definition,” Foggs argued. “That's why mobs stay inside.”

  “Listen,” on my orders Novitsky had dragged a dead Daugoth along and was now busy covering the Electric Storm's mounting in a thick layer of slime. “What prevents us from using stealth? We'll just walk in, put one of those camo devices on her and pull her out.”

  “You're too smart, you,” Foggs chuckled. “Come on, slap more slime on, don't spare it. Make sure those bastards don't smell the steel while we set up the turret.”

  “Can someone answer my question?” Novitsky insisted.