The Outlaw (Phantom Server: Book #2)

by Andrei Livadny

  “Zander was alone,” Vandal said. “And he crept past them nice and quiet. With two of us carrying a heavy body, we're sure to walk right into the guards. Did you see that they all follow random routes? Imagine you step on something and it rattles, or you stumble and unstealth accidentally? With all those mobs around! They'll have a party! And you'll be going directly to your respawn point. There's also another thing. You should always, always mop up a lair. Leaving it undone is a stupid waste. We need to level up and we could use some loot too. Did you see their boss? I'm sure she'll drop something worth our while.”

  “But what if we shoot our own by mistake?”

  “Nah. Only if it ricochets off something. Didn't you see where they keep their stores? They're behind some cliffs below.”

  “All done,” I connected the two fully loaded force shield belts. “Come on, Foggs.”

  Vandal and Novitsky stayed behind to cover us while we stole toward the cave entrance and set up the turret. We hadn't fastened it down yet for fear of making any noise, then retreated as quietly as we'd come.

  Novitsky stood up, peeking from behind the rock. He didn't want to miss anything. I, on the contrary, sat back and lowered my eyelids to shut out any distractions, then entered the local network.

  The Daugoths hadn't noticed anything. The turret's infrared sensor streamed a picture of their barely visible outlines. The enormous female was in the center. You couldn't miss her if you tried. Hopefully, she was going to get enough damage to lose all of her abilities before we even entered the cave.

  “On my signal.”

  I sent a mental command to the turret's mounting. Its razor-clawed feet fashioned out of the manipulators sank deep into the rocky floor. Immediately the spiders reacted to the unusual sound. The nearest guards scurried toward the entrance to find out the cause of all this clamor.

  Fire ripped through the dark. The female screamed, having lost 25% HP in less than ten seconds. A cloud of neurotoxins filled the cave.

  Foggs swung round. The female's scream sounded suspiciously like a call-up signal. But it didn't seem as if they were getting any reinforcements. We'd already smoked all the nearby Daugoths that might have attacked us from the rear.

  The turret kept firing non-stop, its servomotors arcing its double barrels ever so slightly within the field of fire. Ammo was down 30%. The female's Health had shrunk to 50%. The infrared sensor couldn't stream anything anymore: its field of vision was blocked by the heaped-up bodies.

  Suddenly the force shield flared up, deflecting an attack from above. A dozen mobs had found a blind spot on the cave's ceiling and had used it to get to the turret. I'd maxed out the shield though so all they'd done they'd lost their own limbs in the attempt.

  I released the mental trigger.

  In the silence that followed, all one could hear was the sound of rocks crashing down the slope, the wheezing of the dying Daugoths, the screeching of movement and the thin whizzing sound of their quills loosed off by these “bionic machines”.

  I couldn't see anything past the heaped-up bodies. But judging by the sound, I'd been correct: the wounded ones were now trying to take cover within the cave.

  The force shield kept pulsating overhead.

  “What are you waiting for?” Vandal asked me anxiously.

  “Let them regroup.”

  The thumping sound of quills grew stronger, more methodical. The heap of bodies began to fall apart, revealing what was behind it. I could now see about a dozen mobs that stood in a semicircle, showering us with quills rhythmically and systematically. The disturbed female's outline towered behind them. She reared up, spitting venom.

  She seemed to be down to her second ability.

  The infrared sensor outlined the pools of liquid growing on the floor. The rock hissed and heated up wherever her venom touched it, filling the air above it with toxic smoke. Not good. I thought about the rover's corroded armor. Could there be another one of these ladies prowling on the loose or was this one capable of leaving her lair?

  “Zander, what are you waiting for?”

  I resumed firing.

  These mobs were smart though. They immediately dispersed, shrinking into the walls. Those who still had all of their limbs intact leapt toward the ceiling and hung there, clinging to the uneven rock. I loosed off another burst into the female. She took damage in silence.

  But what were those silhouettes? Could they be wounded Daugoths crawling toward their queen?

  “Foggs, get to the entrance! Send me the data!”

  He dashed off. Immediately his gear's sensors began streaming the picture.

  The queen was secreting some whitish goo. The maimed Daugoths swallowed it greedily, restoring their Health.

  Our force shield was at 20%. The turret had 300 rounds left.

  I squeezed the mental trigger and never released it again.

  * * *

  It had turned out to be not as easy as we'd thought. I'd fired the last rounds. The force shield folded. The queen had about 5% Life left when she began to devour the Daugoths crowding around her to restore her own Health!

  I just loved their food chain. “Foggs — now!”

  He hurled a chunk of cargonite coupled with a battery block into the cave.

  I had no idea how much damage Molecular Mist could deal. Hopefully, I might find it out after the battle. But now I had to get to the entrance, select the bright signature of the battery unit as target and activate Replication.

  With a blinding flash, a pillar of fire roared toward the ceiling. Crimson haze poured out of the cave, causing sensors to glitch. I darted toward the entrance squeezing myself past the molten turret and scanned the location.

  The queen was dead. Her body towered there motionless.

  You've received a new level!

  You have new characteristic, skill and ability points available.

  You've created a nanite colony. Your Mnemotechnics skill has been upgraded to level 4.

  For your information: the above upgrade results in the activation of the external neuronet you received from Ingmud.

  For your information: as long as the above neuronet module remains plugged into your mind expander, it will give you +1 to Mnemotechnics and +1 to all active ability levels.

  New ability available: Differential Nanite Control

  Warning! The external neuronet requests access to the newly-created nanite colony control. Allow: Yes/No.

  Honestly, I'd already started thinking that Ingmud had damaged the neuronet while extracting the nanites from me. So this message took me by surprise.

  Allow: Yes/No, the command kept blinking insistently.

  I pressed Yes.

  The nanite colony is now controlled by the external neuronet. The range of your Piercing Vision ability has been increased to 150 ft.

  You've received a new level!

  A new unique quest chain is available: The Facets of Reality.

  Step 1. Find a way to communicate with the neuronet that won't present any danger to your own mind.

  “Zander, whassup?”

  I was shivering. Too much information over these last couple of seconds.

  Did this mean that some part of Liori's identity had survived, after all?

  “Zander?” Foggs insisted, unable to get past me. I stood frozen in everybody's way. “What can you see in there?”

  “The queen is dead,” I stepped aside, letting him through. “Novitsky, where's that antidote?”

  Both the way the quest was phrased and my earlier experience with my “phantom twin” warned me against jumping the gun. I had to give this new development a good bit of thought once I'd rested. At the moment, I couldn't think straight from exhaustion. The best I could do was produce a simple and doable plan for the next fifteen minutes: we had to rescue Kathryn and that Rick guy, collect the loot and make ourselves scarce double quick.

  I tried to focus on my surroundings. I peered around the cave, unable to shake off an old adage that seemed appropriate,
for some reason: God made all men different. Colonel Colt made them equal.

  The cave was a blood-curdling mess of still smoldering stinking body parts, its walls pockmarked by bullets. The queen's carcass oozed venom.

  “Vandal, you collect the loot. Pick up everything we can use. Foggs, I want you to help him. Novitsky, where the hell are you?”

  I made my way to the cave's far end. The thick sheets of cobwebs had burned away, reduced to smoldering tatters. Kathryn and Rick hadn't been hurt much. The fire had singed their suits but it made no difference to them at that moment: both were unconscious and in Paralysis.

  “Zander, I'm not sure the antidote will work,” Novitsky finally made his way to me, clinking some vials. “I extracted it from what's their name, Irakhs, didn't I? What's the chance of it being the same formula as the Daugoth neurotoxin?”

  “I've no idea. Just do it. Take him first,” I pointed at the man.

  Novitsky crouched next to him. “He's...” his voice broke. “He's awaiting respawn.”

  Dammit!

  I leaned over Kathryn. Only 10 pt. Life left!

  “Pass me some metabolytes! Combat ones!” I snatched the tube syringes from him. A steel cuff on Kathryn's suit wrist was covered in small round sockets protected by diaphragms. I knew this system of emergency exo injection from Argus.

  I clicked the tube's top into the socket and pressed hard, injecting the stimulants.

  Got it. Kathryn's life bar quivered and began to grow.

  “Did it work?” Novitsky demanded, anxious.

  “It did.”

  “Zander, mind if I go and see what it was that the queen used to heal her soldiers with? It might be some unique exo stuff.”

  “Okay, but make it quick. I can manage on my own now.”

  Novitsky dashed off to do more exobiology studies. I crouched next to Kathryn, monitoring her condition.

  The debuff was still there. She remained paralyzed. I was a bit wary of injecting the Irakh-extracted antidote: Novitsky might be right saying it could do more harm than good. I just had to wait. Sooner or later the effect of the neurotoxin would expire but before it did, we'd have to support her by injecting combat metabolytes.

  Vandal and Foggs had already searched the cave and were now rummaging through all the rotting junk the Daugoths had hoarded. For a novice player, that was a treasure trove of cargonite and miscellaneous weapons. I noticed a Dargian sniper's rifle like the one I used to have.

  “Can I take a look?” I took it from Vandal and looked it over, then returned it to him. Although broken, it was still useful. With my level 5 in Mnemotechnics I could try to repair of even improve weapons.

  “Take all the devices and spare parts you can find. Don't bother with cargonite: it's too heavy to carry and we have no one to sell it to here.”

  “No way!” Vandal said, reluctant to leave any trophies behind. “We'll take as much as we can carry. I'm going to load up Novitsky too. Where is he, actually?”

  “He's gutting the queen. Don't forget we still have to carry Kathryn. Actually, we need to change our gear. There're four combat suits here. The mercs' equipment,” I nodded at their bodies, “is so much better. Foggs? Did you say you wanted to open the Mechanic ability?”

  “I did, yeah.”

  “Then you'd better take Rick's suit.”

  “Their suits are damaged!” Foggs flinched. “The helmets have holes in them. And then there's this slime inside...” he shuddered.

  “At least they fit the life support cartridges we found in the rover. Listen to my advice: dump all the Dargian cargonite and place the mercs' suits in there instead. They'll come out squeaky clean. That's for the squeamish ones. I'll patch up all the holes later.”

  “Okay,” I could see Foggs’ reasoning had gotten the better of his emotions. “Zander? Are you going to swap your gear?”

  “Absolutely. I'll go back to the cliff where their exobiologist died. I could use his bioscanner.”

  At that moment we both heard a short snapping sound followed by a shriek. We jumped to our feet, looking around.

  “Novitsky!” I darted toward the queen's lifeless body and fired a burst at a spider that had crawled from under her. Too late!

  Dammit!

  Novitsky had collapsed. He didn't move. A large hole gaped in his chest, left by the regenerated mob's fierce blow. Amazement froze in his eyes. His hand clutched a vial of murky white liquid.

  Vandal stopped. He crouched slowly and covered his head with his hands.

  Foggs seemed to have turned into stone.

  I had a lump in my throat. None of us could speak. We stood in silence, knowing his fate only too well. In two hours, he would come to at his respawn point — the one located in the slave drivers' camp!

  “Shit!” Foggs invested all his pent-up fury in a hefty kick at the dead Daugoth. “I should have known!”

  “You couldn't have noticed,” Vandal said hoarsely. “The mob was hiding underneath. Zander, shall we go back to the slave drivers' camp quickly? Our levels are good enough now.”

  “What, carrying Kathryn?”

  “But they'll torture him to death!”

  “The camp is thirty miles across the mountains,” Foggs pointed out.

  “There must be something we can do!” despair filled his eyes murky with pain, his heart demanding some immediate action.

  “There is,” I said. “When Kathryn comes round, she can tell us where to find their ship. We aren't leaving Novitsky behind. That I promise.”

  Vandal gulped but said nothing. He knew I was right.

  That hurt. A lot. In any other gaming world, a respawn is a temporary inconvenience. Your partner goes missing for a while, then rejoins the group. Not here. Here you started to understand the true meaning of loss.

  I didn't remove Novitsky from the group. That way he'd keep receiving XP.

  Vandal nodded. Foggs turned round and silently walked off to change into new gear.

  I crouched next to Novitsky and opened his inventory. I took the neurotoxins and the antidotes and replaced them with two stimpacks, a pulse handgun and a set of micro nuclear batteries. I also added a couple of food concentrates and some water in a flask. The slave drivers wouldn't be able to take any of it from him.

  I just hoped he'd make it.

  Chapter Six

  The crash site of the Exobiologists Clan raid group.

  We got to the rover and took a break.

  By the time we got out of the gorge, Kathryn’s paralysis debuff had worn off but she was still unconscious.

  We decided to wait for her to come round. It was probably better than to start combing through the woods in search of the raid’s landing site.

  It began to drizzle. Low clouds of ash enveloped the sky. You couldn’t really tell whether it was day or night in the constant twilight.

  While Vandal and Foggs double-checked the area, I sat on a flat rock and opened my inventory to take a look at my recent discoveries. Now that we’d changed into the raiders’ suits we had plenty of life support cartridges. But we could have used a few more guns, that’s for sure.

  We’d patched the dented suits with more nanites. The external neuronet was active but we hadn’t exchanged any data yet.

  First off, I disassembled the broken technology scanner and removed the memory block to test it. Many of its chips had suffered fire damage; still we would probably be able to recover some of the information. The problem was, I had nowhere to copy it to. Having said that, how about my own mind expander?

  Then again, I wasn’t really sure. The sheer volume of the data was impressive. What did they have there?

  I opened the file. Oh wow. The Technologists Clan's complete database? Now that Argus was virtually non-existent, this was probably one of the few surviving copies!

  Copy, no doubt about it. And the technology scanner’s OS module, too!

  I didn’t even pause to consider all of the consequences. Only when a sharp pain pierced my skull, I realize
d it was probably not such a good idea. Too late. The copying process had begun, sending my brain into overload.

  I had to boost my metabolic processor. Gradually, I began thinking straight again.

  So what do I do, stop the copying? No way. I might not get another chance.

  I switched to background mode and took stock of my senses. The pain had subsided somewhat, replaced by an urgent sense of danger.

  In the last few days, I’d developed a knee-jerk habit of scanning my surroundings at the slightest hunch, the way any other person would cast a wary glance around on hearing a suspicious noise. The difference was, I didn’t even have to betray myself by moving. The entire process took place in the recesses of my brain.

  “And? What do you want?” I asked.

  This was a stealthed Vandal trying to creep up on me. Couldn’t have found a better time to test their equipment!

  “How did you notice me?” he asked, genuinely surprised. “I was invisible!” he materialized in front of me.

  “I told you this was a test model. It only blocks visuals.”

  “Ah, so you noticed my power imprint, then?” he demanded, inquisitive.

  I nodded.

  Vandal sighed. “Shame. At least now I know. I really thought you wouldn’t notice me. Never mind. I’ll go check on Kathryn.”

  He headed for the rover, leaving me to struggle with a sudden bout of vertigo.

  Diagrams of all sorts of machines flashed before my mind’s eye. My neuronets were in overload. My metabolic implant kept clicking in new cartridges, supporting my speeding metabolism as my brain’s energy consumption kept growing.

  The world blurred, distancing, about to disappear. My mind was crumbling under pressure; my brain was failing to process the mass of data flooding it.

  New skill available: Technologist. Accept: Yes/No.

  I paused, then blinked my acceptance.

  Now I felt a bit better. New messages began to pop up,

  You have learned a discipline: Hand and Integrated Weapons Upgrade.