This wasn’t just any old debuff. This was a well-planned assault. But I still couldn’t see the enemy!
Roakhmar didn’t count. Having deactivated the field, he too had frozen on the spot. But if it wasn’t him, who was it, then? Could it be the artifact’s security system? Its last line of defense, so to say?
I was thinking about the wrong things! First I had to combat this!
A fine cloud of nanites left my armor. That’s when I regretted not having bothered to distribute the available skill and ability points I’d received for mopping up the tower. I’d thought there’d be plenty of time to do that!
Surrender control of the nanites to the external neuronet.
It all happened simultaneously: a blinding flash, the crackling sound of the unevenly heated metal and someone’s groan of disappointment.
The external neuronet has activated a surprise ability: Self-Sacrifice. You’ve lost 80,583 nanites. The enemy’s nanites have been neutralized.
Liori, clever girl!
The recharge mechanism clicked, sending a new micro nuclear battery clip into its slot and discarding the depleted units. They fell to the floor and rolled in all directions.
I swung round. My servodrives screeched. My armor was dropping flakes of rust.
Replication, I sent a mental command while swiping my eyes over a large protruding piece of the gravity elevator I could use as source material.
“Kathryn? What do you think you’re doing?”
She stood half-turned to me, her armored suit enveloped in a thick scan-blocking veil of nanites.
“Kathryn!”
Slowly she turned round, surrounded by a swarm of incandescent vortices. Millions of nanites swirled around her, distorting the shape of her armor.
I knew this blood-curdling scene only too well.
I can’t tell you what I felt. This was Avatroid, as large as life and twice as ugly.
Had the girl existed at all? Who was it that we’d saved from the spiders’ stifling den? At the time, I had indeed thought it strange that the mobs had trussed her up and left her there without even trying to crack her technogenic shell and sample the sweet flesh.
Thoughts crowded my mind. Did that mean that all this time, we’d been followed by an automaton controlled by an ancient AI? Creating a character’s avatar wouldn’t be a problem for it, of course, but I’d love to know how it had managed to deceive us with such a believable facsimile of a girl’s behavior?
Kathryn is dead. Avatroid killed her and assimilated her mind expander, Liori whispered bitterly. This is the only possible explanation. Even I had no idea. Zander, Avatroid's here to get Genesis!
Our mental dialogue was only the backdrop to the action unfolding around us. In another blinding flash, a second molecular cloud whirled up into the air as my nanites replicated again. I granted Liori control of them: we had to remove the debuff from the other group members.
Who was Ingmud, then? Another ancient AI whose deformed mind had been overpowered by its human matrix? The opposite of Avatroid? Did that make us pawns on their Galaxy-sized chess board?
Without taking my eyes off the sinister technogenic monster, I repeated the nanite replication process.
A hoarse laughter rumbled in my earphones like far-off thunder. Foggs stirred weakly; Roakhmar awoke from his stupor as my nanobots had removed the debuff from him.
Avatroid wasn’t attacking yet. He was still incomplete, surrounded by a cloud of incandescent gas. Smoke billowed in all directions, sending gusts of hot wind across the cave.
* * *
The artifact’s force field faded slowly. Roakhmar had already jumped back to his feet, looking confused. To him, the spawn of evil materializing in front of us was part of their ancient cult – virtually an object of worship.
“Roakhmar, use your head!” I rolled toward the safety of a collapsed smoldering terminal and opened the common communications channel, forwarding them the information about this ancient monster.
I just hoped that both the Disciples and my own men who’d never had to deal with anything like this before would be smart enough to work out Avatroid’s nature. It combined a number of incompatible AI modules that used to belong to on-board systems of different spacecraft. Most of them had been damaged. The Outlaws had put this Frankenstein together with the sole objective of using it for what it was worth, then eliminating it.
You’re all going to die! a synthetic voice rumbled through my mind, as if confirming my train of thought.
This was an insane monster possessing a wealth of ancient knowledge but torn by inner conflicts unknown to a machine. Many of his modules must have spent considerable periods of time in contact with human minds, carrying with them the imprints of somebody else’s frustrations, feelings and desires.
Even Roakhmar shrank back and nearly lost his footing, frightened of the ancient roar that rang with primeval greed.
Millions of nanites kept swarming around the monster's mechanical outline, forming various devices layer by layer, molecule by molecule.
It all happened much faster than words can tell.
In another flash, my nanites replicated again and immediately split up to liberate Vandal and the remaining Disciples from their Critical Failures. That was it, no more cooldown: I’d exhausted my Nanite Replication ability for the next twenty-four hours.
“Smoke the bastard!” Vandal’s voice was brimming with fury.
Foggs quickly put two and two together and ducked for cover. His Tesla gun began spitting short bursts of precision fire.
I opened fire too, but what was the point? Avatroid’s force field throbbed, deflecting white-hot slugs that dropped – no, dripped – to the floor. The monster’s mocking laughter rang in our ears. His nanobots kept creating new modules. He had grown considerably, his shoulders unnaturally broad. The nanites were using Kathryn’s armor suit to build something truly unprecedented.
“You worms!” a bolt of lightning lashed out at the Disciples. Two of them used their personal force fields but the third one wasn’t as lucky. His squat figure filled with transparent fiery plasma, then crumbled to ashes.
A flash of nanites went for the nearest Disciple, leaving a smoky trail in its wake and bestowing three debuffs onto the unfortunate: System Failure, Critical Failure and Power Leak.
“Scorch his nanites!” Foggs yelled.
This technogenic golem was nearing completion with every second — which meant he was acquiring new and potentially deadly abilities.
Finally, Roakhmar came back to his senses. Although emotionally shattered, he was now ready to act.
“Ischkharah!” the familiar command echoed in the earphones.
Two plasma generators fired from opposite directions. Compressed by magnetic fields, clumps of ionized gas sliced through the gloom and exploded on impact with Avatroid’s force field, burning nanites and preventing them from finalizing their transformations.
The time of organic life forms is over! Avatroid’s deafening roar rang with metal. I will restore my creators’ technosphere!
“You were built by Outlaws,” I shouted at him.
By way of reply, he lashed my hideout with an electric charge. It cut right through the top of the terminal behind which I was hiding, its white-hot jagged edge breathing fire just above my head.
I darted to change cover.
“You flippin' freerider! Why did you have to jump on our bandwagon?” Vandal stood up and sent a long burst of fire his way – admittedly without much success. “If you’re too weak to get here by yourself, you should say so!”
Avatroid's reply was rather straightforward,
“I can’t materialize within the artifact’s force field. I always opt for the easiest way. Predictably, you’ve paved my way here.”
“Why do you need Genesis, anyway?” Foggs picked up on Vandal’s idea and took over from him, engaging the monstrous NPC in a dialogue.
“Because you won’t leave me alone! You keep messing everything up!
You capture space stations and implant yourselves with neuronets! You destroy modules that are rightly mine! I can’t personally squash every one of the millions of sentient worms! These exo viruses will soon put an end to all of this!”
His growling was drowned out by the interference caused by a new plasma charge. The monster’s shields dropped to 10%.
Then he disappeared. My scanners didn’t see him!
Level 50 Steel Mist. I can’t do anything, sorry, Liori wrote.
Roakhmar cast a desperate look around. Furious, he wanted to kick a discharged plasma generator out of his way.
“Don't disrespect your weapons!” Vandal yelled at him. He hurled at him the belt taken off one of the dead Dargians. “Destroy the artifact before it’s too late!”
I didn’t hear Roakhmar’s reply. Everything dissolved in a deafening rumble. Replication flashes merged into a wall of fire. The thick molecular clouds began disgorging combat drones.
* * *
Genesis' force field kept dwindling. The technology scanner control in my interface sprang back to life.
Changing positions, I managed to get closer to the artifact.
I ducked and ran for Roakhmar. The drones kept attacking us. Laser beams whooshed overhead. Molten metal splattered everywhere. Smoke swirled over smoldering organic remains.
Roakhmar was marked as awaiting respawn. A lethal wound gaped in his chest. I grabbed the force field control module with its still-highlighted command sequence pictograms. My own force shield throbbed, absorbing damage on its last set of micro nuclear batteries.
I ran toward the next cover and gasped, catching my breath. I tried to reactivate the force field by pressing the highlighted pictograms but their combinations were way too many.
Vandal and Foggs retreated toward the gravity elevator. I could hear explosions going off in that direction followed by showers of incandescent shrapnel.
“Zander, over here!” Vandal’s figure shimmered as he received a new level. “We need to get out of here! We won’t make it!”
I ran for my life. Torrents of coherent radiation sliced through the dark, leaving red-hot scars on my armor. I ducked under a massive bow-shaped gravity compensator support and fired back at the drone chasing me, slicing off its pylon launcher and shutting down its laser. Enveloped in a cloud of smoke, the mob banked and rammed into a bulkhead, disappearing in a wall of flames.
Where was the bastard now?
I activated Piercing Vision. No good.
Avatroid reappeared out of nowhere. His massive bulk loomed into view just next to the gravity elevator. I could see him; I peppered him with machine-gun fire but the bastard had already restored his shields!
A screech of servomotors; a swing of a mechanical arm; a blinding flash of plasma.
Vandal dropped his gun and sank to the floor.
With my last strength, I bolted toward him. Liori had spent all her nanites on removing the debuffs, so she couldn’t help us now.
Foggs cried out, threw his hands in the air and collapsed onto the ground. Status: awaiting respawn.
I used Disintegration on a conveniently passing drone. The close explosion pierced Avatroid's shield; his servomotors screeching, he swung round to face me. His movements were jerky but his abilities didn’t fail him. A Plasma Lash sliced through my armor.
The pain was mind-boggling. My legs gave under me. My head swam. We’d been pretty stupid thinking we could overpower him.
The cave’s ceiling shuddered. A web of fine cracks ran across it. Then it began to crumble. Jumbo chunks of rock came crashing down, squashing the segmented platforms and crumpling the framework. Fierce torrents of fire gushed through the openings – the flames of a spaceship’s planetary engines.
Images of various spacecraft flashed before my mind’s eye. Finally, one of them became highlighted in red.
That’s right. I’d seen it before. It had been drifting by the edge of the debris field near Wearong.
The merciless flames melted the ancient equipment as the spaceship restored by Avatroid moved toward the artifact, leaving destruction in its wake. Part of the platform on which Genesis rested broke off and crashed down, destroying whole floors of the tower in its fall. Still, the artifact hovered in place, supported by its built-in gravitech.
The ship switched to antigravity thrust and floated over me, opening the gates of its cargo hold. Its powerful manipulators reached out and closed on Genesis, clutching it tightly.
The force ramp slid out. A hatch opened. Two men hurried out and froze, awaiting their orders.
I was still trying to hold myself together. In one final effort I focused on their name tags,
Jyrd. Reincarnation 2/150
Khors. Reincarnation 3/150
“The time of biological life forms is over!” the dull angry voice reached from afar. “Forget your Oasis, worms! You’re too worthless to grasp where you are and what is about to happen!”
My mind faded.
Chapter Ten
The Planet Darg. The slave traders’ camp.
Respawn
The gloomy sky hung low.
I was cold. Gusts of wind tore at the tents, raising little tornadoes of dust. Jagged cliffs loomed gray in the bleak light of the early morning. The slave drivers’ drones patrolled the air, aiming their paralyzers in an arc.
I lay on the cold stone floor of a cramped cage. My legs were bound, my hands chained behind my back.
The translucent icons of my interface slowly materialized before my eyes.
Zander. Level 77. Pilot. Current status: Prisoner
My Physical Energy indicator hovered in the yellow sector. Most ability icons were highlighted in red.
You don’t have enough nanites or external sources of energy. Self-replication is not possible.
That wasn’t a problem though. Any of the patrolling drones would make excellent source material.
Quest update alert: Restoration of the Oasis.
Step 3: inform Ingmud of his daughter’s death.
Step 4 (unavailable for group participation). You now possess detailed scanner files of Genesis including the Founders’ databases, and its complete digital copy. Now you need to decide what to do with this unique information.
The icon of direct neurosensory contact with Liori was inactive.
Barely twenty-four hours in gaming time had elapsed but it felt like a lifetime.
Just above my Ability menu, three avatars were highlighted in my interface,
Foggs. Level 67. Warrior. Unconscious. Current status: Prisoner
Vandal. Level 65. Warrior. Unconscious. Current status: Prisoner.
Marcus Novitsky. Level 54. Exobiologist. Current status: Prisoner.
I opened the mnemonic chat. “Hi there, man.”
“Zander?” Novitsky sounded both happy and surprised. “Where are you?”
“I'm a prisoner at the moment, after a respawn. You okay?”
“Yeah,” he didn’t sound too convinced. I could detect vague images of his surroundings in the background of his messages.
“D’you think you can forward me your neuroimplant’s visuals?” I asked.
“I can try. I’m not in the camp though. They've taken us out this morning to clear some debris.”
A picture came slowly into view. I could see a rockfall blocking the familiar tunnel. “I want you to take a good look around you.”
I was right. I could see the edge of the platform that used to hold the scorched defense point. Four Dargians were working there, apparently trying to repair the damage.
Their force fields were down. Temporary power cables snaked around some mysterious parts of alien weapons.
“Zander, what do you want us to do?”
“How many people are there with you?”
“About thirty. All low level, I’m afraid. They didn’t get the chance to level up. Thanks for keeping me in the group.”
“Can you read the Dargians’ stats?”
“Mechanics, leve
ls 40+.”
“Any armed guards?”
“None. Everyone but those four abandoned this location once it was shelled. The slavers pop by from time to time. So what is it you want us to do?” he repeated.
“Nothing for the time being. Keep your heads down and get on with hauling those rocks. We’ll get you out,” I assured him. “In the meantime, no good us attracting their attention. I’m happy you’re alive. I’ll keep you posted. Over and out.”
I lay there all trussed up staring at Darg’s ashen sky. Despite what I’d just said, I had neither the desire to escape from captivity so natural for a player, nor the equally natural desire to kick some Dargian slavers' butt in doing so.
What was wrong with me?
My Physical Energy indicator began to shrink for no reason whatsoever. My breathing seized even though no one had attacked me. It couldn’t be the Exhaustion debuff!
A respawned player was supposed to be angry and reenergized. Or was it the game engine recalculating the post effects of continuous metabolite overdose?
But what if Liori had been right? Could my in-mode capsule be playing up? I had no idea of whatever was going on in real life.
Avatroid’s words sprang to mind,
You’re too worthless to grasp where you are and what is about to happen!
I struggled to catch my breath and cast a look around. The bars of my cage were made of rusted finger-thick metal and concreted into the foundations. There was no way I could bend or work them loose.
I focused on a bar,
Durability: 110
Well, the local slave traders definitely hadn’t counted on having any Mnemotechs among their prisoners!
Calm down, I told myself. Escaping wasn’t a problem. I could always create a fuss and smoke a dozen slavers. But what were we supposed to do next?
The Outlaw (Phantom Server: Book #2) Page 24