“I'll make you some. Not much.”
“How much?”
“Fifty rounds for the time being. In return, you'll supply my men with personal force shields. Plus one heavy pulse machine gun.”
“I can give you the shields,” he agreed, “but not the gun. You can't use it, anyway.”
“He can,” I pointed at Vandal.
“Very well. Two hundred rounds? Deal?”
I loved it. Was he trying to haggle? “No,” I stood my ground. “Fifty for the time being. The bullets aren't easy to make. Did you notice that the mobs quickly become immune to them?”
“So what?” he pulled his neck in again. “We first paralyze, then scorch them straight away!”
“Soon we might need much bigger doses of the toxin. No, I'm afraid, I can't promise a hundred rounds now. I'll be making them in small batches, and that's the end of it.”
He hissed something that my semantic processor failed to translate. Still, he didn't argue. He turned round and headed off to issue orders to his group.
* * *
A bestiary.
There was no other word to describe it. We climbed to the second floor of the tower and walked along the walls of shimmering light, followed by the greedy stares of fantastic animals.
The force fields that divided the floors into rooms bore the fiery symbols of the Founders' language.
I had no doubt that this building had in the past been used by the Founders themselves and not by their AIs. Otherwise, all these warning signs and instructions wouldn't have been necessary.
The semantic processor deciphered parts of one of the signs,
Biological lab 237. Project ?????
The question marks stood for personal names which weren't in the processor databases.
Biosphere samples: Planet ?????
I slowed down, peering through the force field “wall”. Behind it was a rectangular room about sixty by ninety feet crowded with the skeletal remains of unidentifiable devices and equipment. Time had taken its toll on these rooms; and later, the Flesh had occupied these floors, leaving traces of its activity on every surface.
A metamorph stirred weakly in a cloud of rancid smoke. Seeing us, it tensed, transforming, then lunged at us — but clashed into the scorching wall of energy and recoiled.
The sounds of gunshots and plasma charges distracted me. The Disciples' point men had come across some surviving Flesh lining the corridor. The tower activation had sliced it into many pieces but failed to kill it completely.
The Paralysis debuff worked like a dream. The creature failed to complete its transformation as it was first immobilized, then incinerated with plasma.
There couldn't have been more than two or three such mobs per floor. The Dargians shouldn't have any problems. Problems would start if the remaining emitters died on us.
I kept scanning them occasionally but so far, the emitters' signatures looked stable. That's quality! The Founders' technologies were indeed beyond our imagination.
“Zander,” the Disciples' leader caught up with me.
“Speak up.”
“I need to know how you got in here.”
“Just stealthed up and followed you. Why? Is it a problem?”
“Followed us, what for?”
“Didn't I tell you? Loot is good here. What's there not to understand? Besides, we simply had no other option once your men surrounded the hill. We'd set up camp on its top so seeing as we couldn't get down, we were obliged to check out this place.”
I could see he didn't believe me, so I added, “You may think what you want. My ship was shot down. My men need to level up. I didn't want to meet your slave drivers again. Been there, done that. Didn't you see that I have a Dargian semantic processor?
He frowned. “Slave drivers are the scum of our society.”
“You don't have to apologize. You consider us your enemies, I know. But you've given me your word so you'd better keep it.”
“You invaded our world!”
“I understand you can't wait to smoke me. But just think how many mobs we're yet to tackle. What you gonna do when you run out of neurotoxin cartridges?”
“Very well, Human. I'll keep my word,” Roakhmar snapped and stepped up the pace.
“Zander, what did he want?” Kathryn's voice chimed in the earphones.
“He was trying to find out how we got here and what our plans were.”
“Did you tell him??!!”
“Do I look like I did?”
“He'll kill us,” Kathryn panicked. There was no way she could have been their raid's leader. Then again, what made me think she was?
“Don't worry,” I said. “The Disciples won't hurt us.”
* * *
Floor 7 of the tower met us with a gaping abyss.
We'd fought our way through the lower levels without further losses. Their desperate combat by the tower's base must have made these elite Dargian warriors fully appreciate the danger. Now they allowed no room for error. Their force shields were considerably better than the ones I'd seen earlier: theirs were actually segmented like fighter craft shields which allowed them to redistribute their power on the go, concentrating the shields’ protective properties in the direction of a potential threat.
We'd been given identical ones. I hadn't hesitated to take full advantage of the fact by adding another unique scanner file to the Technologists database.
It was about time we stopped for a break, but Roakhmar seemed to be made of steel. Besides, he was anxious. This was the area that had suffered the multiple emitter breakdowns. We stood on its edge facing an expanse of gloom. At its far end you could barely make out the weak glow of the force field and the shimmer of two force escalators.
The mobs were nowhere to be seen. Whatever had happened to them? What if the metamorphs that had attacked us earlier had come from here?
The Disciples leader didn't seem to share this idea. I watched three of his snipers activate their gravitechs, taking up positions on small deformed platforms which had once been used to support the emitters.
“Zander, we need more ammo.”
“Wait a sec,” I activated Object Replication, using the template I'd saved in my mind expander. “There, take it,” I produced three more clips for their Dargian rifles, thirty rounds each. I really didn't like this gutted floor. I had a bad feeling about it.
A Disciple sent by Roakhmar delivered the ammo to the snipers.
“Kathryn, I suggest you go one level below and wait.”
“No way! I'm not going anywhere on my own!”
“That level is clean! You're safe there. That way I'll have one less thing to worry about. You've never told me why you tend to trigger aggro, have you?”
“How do I know? I'm not going anywhere!” demonstratively she perched herself on the scorched stump of some machine or other.
The Disciples fanned out and began to advance.
“Zander,” Foggs pointed at a small platform overhead, “what if I cover us too?”
“Very well. Do it.”
I watched the three plasma generator teams set up their machines on some kind of synthetic hill formed by piled-up debris and the brown mass of compacted organic remains. The discovery didn't make me any happier. If anything, I found it alarming. Did that mean that the emitters had packed up thousands of years ago?
“Roakhmar,” I forwarded him my assessment. “There has to be a metamorph around somewhere. And it must be huge.”
He didn't have time to reply. A wall of flesh reared up and headed for the line of Dargians, crashing its way through the rows of ancient machines.
The snipers' rifles snapped. The Tesla gun discharged with a crackle. That stopped the metamorph's spasmodic progression under the heaps of debris. It stopped; but what could that change? The debuff only lasted five seconds at best. The plasma generators were ready to fire but this mass of paralyzed flesh lay virtually under the Dargians' very feet.
Roakhmar barked a guttural comman
d. The Disciples broke ranks and scattered, switching on their personal force shields. The three plasma guns fired a volley in ionization impact mode, creating a fine grid of manmade bolts of lightning over the area. This was a true sacrifice when the death of a few saves the lives of many.
Chunks of flesh flew everywhere. I heard five or six secondary explosions — these were individual force shields packing up under pressure. And almost straight away, rising from amid impact craters and red-hot framework, dozens of regenerated mobs came for us, scattering the smoldering debris around.
Kathryn ran toward me. Vandal and I covered her with our force shields while stopping the attacking monsters with our two pulse guns. The Dargian snipers fired again but to no avail: the original monster that had now split into dozens of smaller ones had already adapted to the neurotoxin.
The surviving Disciples formed a circle and segmented their personal force fields, forming a dome shield. All their motions looked practiced to oblivion, apparently drilled into them by Roakhmar himself. Having met with their fiery resistance, the wall of assaulting mobs receded. Apparently, even when infuriated, these creatures had some semblance of a self-preservation instinct. They began seeking easier targets, switching their attention to us, the snipers and the plasma generator teams.
Liori, let's do it!
I'm with you. To the end, whatever it is.
The nanites swirled into the air and then suddenly took the girl's shape. My mind expander still held her identity, but her new replication matrix inspired awe. Dripping with iridescent aura, the girl scorched two of the mobs as they tried to get to Foggs.
A level-10 Plasma Blast! Dissolving in the fire, the girl's shape spewed protuberances of blinding discharge as tens of thousands of nanites burned away, turning all living matter to ash.
My Plasma Blast was lamentably low, but I did have Disintegration which turned a target into molecular mist. The air around me was rife with energy, about to explode. Without a moment's thought, I struck.
The nearest mob turned into a ball of fire and dissolved in a cloud of gas.
“Kathryn, move it!” Vandal yelled, firing endless bursts of his heavy machine gun, its accelerator coils smoking.
“What do you want from me?” Kathryn shrieked.
“The neurotoxin! The other one! Use your head!”
His words barely registered. The three nanite colonies controlled by Liori had burned away in the plasma discharges. We stood amid a scorched space. Ash floated in the air.
Disintegration!
My breathing seized. The pressure on my entire system was such that my every nerve had literally turned into an incandescent nichrome wire.
“Foggs! I need some cargonite!”
It was a good job we'd thought about everything we might need to keep my abilities up and running. He lobbed me a diamond-shaped armor fragment with a micro nuclear battery unit bound to it with some wire. And another one! And again!
Replication!
The molecular cloud swelled, exploding, scorching the metamorphs who shrank back.
Replication!
Replication!
Surrender control of the nanites to the external neuronet!
I was exhausted. I had neither the stamina nor the experience needed for such tasks that demanded all of my concentration and dedication.
“I got it!” Kathryn shrieked. “Zander, I've found it!”
“Roakhmar, cover us with your field!” unthinkingly I forwarded him my intentions too. To my surprise, he recognized the mental image. The Dargians' ranks broke; fifteen of them ran toward us. Not all of them made it but eight did, their squat figures closing their ranks again.
“Give it to me!” I yelled at Kathryn, feeling I was about to collapse.
She handed me the vial with exo. I added it to my inventory.
My idea was to create a copy of a heavy pulse machine gun clip with hollow cartridges containing just a droplet of the toxin.
Object Replication!
The mobs were coming for us from everywhere. I had no idea how many of them Liori and I had incinerated, but I had the impression there were more of them now.
The monsters aggroed us like mad. The Dargians tried to contain them while Vandal was distributing the ammo I'd just made to the Disciples.
This was the end.
My Physical Energy indicator was deep in the red. My injectors kept clicking in and out, powerless to do anything. Clutching my head, I dropped to my knees, my fingernails scratching my helmet.
I hadn't been ready for this battle. I was yet to become a half-decent Mnemotech.
I collapsed to one side.
* * *
No idea how much time I'd spent unconscious. When I came round, the battle was already over.
Someone offered me a hand, helping me to my feet.
Roakhmar?
The Disciples' leader lowered his head in silent appreciation of my personal feats that had helped us to stand our ground.
Four more Disciples hovered behind him.
Was that all?
Accepting his aid, I struggled to my feet and cast a look around.
Foggs was climbing down from his ledge. Vandal grinned and slapped my shoulder. Kathryn stood aside without looking at anyone. I wanted to commend her, but I was too weak.
Liori?
I'm here. We need to talk. You can't go any further.
“We're taking a break,” I didn't recognize my own voice, hoarse and wheezy.
“Nowr! We only have five levels left!”
“Then you go without us,” I wasn't going to argue with him.
“Very well,” Roakhmar suddenly agreed. “An hour's break then. We can set up a dome shield.”
Vandal, Foggs and Kathryn crouched around me, exhausted.
We still couldn't understand how we'd survived at all. The fatigue dulled our sense of victory.
It wasn't the right moment to count our levels, distribute XP points and look at our abilities. It could all wait. My mind was numb with exhaustion.
I closed my eyes.
A weak, barely visible light was calling my name, taking me through the maze of my scorched thoughts toward the familiar airlock hatch where Liori awaited me.
These mind expanders were amazing. A paradoxical place that made everything possible. All your dreams, all your secret hopes.
* * *
This was a world of our own digitized souls.
Here the fine threads of our nerves rang with desire; our sensations were as sharp as razor blades; any wrong movement could draw blood. Here everything was possible.
That made even me — who'd long sacrificed his life to cyberspace — feel uneasy.
Our emotions were going off the scale, their hot gusts distorting Liori's features, enveloping her in a thin haze that reached out to me.
A moment of desperate, endless descent. Two minds eager to mix, to dissolve into each other. We both knew it wasn't good. Liori shrank back as if burned, leaving behind a fraction of her memories.
I could see a dark sloping alley squeezed between two towers of concrete and steel corroded by the emissions. Two girls were stealing along in the dark, both no more than seventeen.
I couldn't recognize this world. It was devoid of the game designers' touch. It was drab and grim. I couldn't see the sky. The yellow smog hung low, drizzling acid.
Liori and her friend kept stealing cautious looks around. They wore breathing masks, their eyes concealed by the tinted plastic of their second-hand 3D Optos. Their gear was absolute junk. It was probably pieced together from scrap, forming a semblance of composite armor and a most basic life support system.
Both girls wore gloves with crudely made clamps to clutch pieces of sharpened construction steel with.
Was this the real world? The realization sent shivers down my spine. Were these the bowels of our megalopolis?
Liori stopped. The sloping street spiraled down, transforming into a crumbling disused multi-level junction. Its powerful pi
llars shielded the entrances to numerous tunnels gaping in the concrete wall behind. Most of them were locked but one was only barred in order to allow drainage water to seep away. Its thick bars were dark and oxidized; some were bent just enough for someone to squeeze through.
Kimberly (that was Liori's friend's name) was the first to disappear into the fetid darkness.
“Come on, Lee, move it!” her voice called, distorted by the mask's speakers.
“I'm on my way.”
They entered the suffocating gloom. The light of their weak flashlights could barely reach more than a few feet. Built of glass concrete, the tunnel vaults exuded damp and stench.
Soon the tunnel began to fork off, turning into a maze of underground passages. The two girls continued confidently on their way.
A strange humming sound began to grow.
“Kim, run!” Liori cried out.
They turned a corner and flew up some rusty stairs toward a small platform of steel mesh, barely visible through the toxic smog. Droplets of condensation descended onto the girls' armor, hissing, trying to erode their way through the hardy composite.
The noise kept approaching. The concrete tunnel bed frothed with a torrent of murky water. Someone must have opened the emergency sluicegate.
The little platform creaked, groaning under the pressure.
Soon the torrent receded, leaving a thin trickle of waste behind.
Liori and Kimberly didn't linger on their unstable support but shinnied back down.
What were they up to? I just couldn't work it out. What did they need in the sewer? Honestly, I'd never been in the underground conduits of modern cities. My own childhood had been quite sheltered. My parent's cramped apartment had a built-in 3D projector. 200 square foot is a lot if all your furniture and partitions are remodifiable and if you use high-density holograms for decoration.
My parents' thin high tech shell used to protect me from the outer world. I'd been surrounded by its 3D environment, its forests rustling, its breezes touching my cheeks. I was safe in a world so real, so interesting and so boundless. Until I'd turned seven, I'd had no idea that the Earth's biosphere had long been dead.
The Outlaw (Phantom Server: Book #2) Page 21