Devastator

by Jason Cordova

  “If that nickname weren’t already taken…” she let her voice trail off as Shane laughed.

  Shane began to introduce himself to the others, and she watched the group carefully. She couldn’t help but hope this group, the team she had the most experience with, would be the one to help her track down and figure out what was going on. While not the most experienced group, they did have the most time working together. It also didn’t hurt that they all got along, she knew.

  Once the introductions were complete, Tori coughed slightly and looked meaningfully at the door. Immediately a dampening field enveloped them, muffling their voices and hiding them from sight. Someone still might be able to see them, she recalled as she began, but they’d have to look very, very carefully. She nodded her thanks to Michael.

  “I seriously doubt we’ll get lucky on the first try,” she said without much preamble, “but one can hope. I need ideas though, people. You’re the best coders I could get my grubby little hands on. The anomaly is fluid and can’t be locked down by any of the sysadmins. It’s why they asked me for help. I’m at a loss here, though. Help me.”

  “Oh great,” Tyler muttered sourly. “I thought I was being chosen for my good looks.”

  Tori shook her head. “My first suggestion would be to fan out and just canvass the entire map,” she explained and held up a hand to forestall any potential protests. “But I realized that would be a huge waste of time.”

  “Minimap hunt?” Stacey asked.

  Tori nodded. “We wander around and search using the minimap jump function,” she explained. “Click, search, jump. Dirty, but fast and efficient. This world is one of the older ones in the system so nobody thinks the anomaly originated from here, but it’s still one of the four potentials for funneling…whatever is causing the anomaly. So keep an eye out.”

  “So we keep a low profile,” Michael finished for her, his low voice gravelly and strange sounding. She looked at him, slightly amused. It was the first time she’d ever heard the man speak.

  “Exactly,” she said with a nod. “We don’t draw attention to ourselves. We blend in. We hide our status, if possible. If attacked, retreat. If pursued, then and only then, you fight back. But the gamers know there are referees floating around in here, ensuring nobody is using an illegal code, so they shouldn’t come after us. Shouldn’t being the key word here.”

  “Ha!” Tyler barked loudly. “‘Illegal codes.’ That’s funny stuff.”

  She grinned and nodded in agreement.

  “If they had illegal codes, I’m sure people would’ve copied them by now and everyone would have them,” Tyler continued with a snort. “I remember the bylaws. ‘No code that can be uploaded to use in a fight, gladiator mode or otherwise, is illegal.’ But hey, if gamers are buying the lie and not pointing their codes at us, I’m cool with it.”

  Everyone nodded at that. The last thing any of them wanted was to be accidently offed by a one-starred noob. Not only would their reputation take a huge hit, but knowing their friends within The Warp, the unlucky fellow would be the butt of jokes for the next six months at least. Only then would the recriminations begin.

  Even though they were working together, the competitiveness that drove each of them was still prevalent. She could feel an underlying tension in the room as their competing personalities vied for dominance. She wanted to quell it, to put an end to it, but couldn’t bring herself to do it. She needed that edge from each of them, and any attempt to quash it could result in some sort of internal rebellion. So she stayed mute.

  She thought about this team. It had been her easiest to build, since she knew everyone except for Shane from when she’d played in Crisis. Stacey had been around with Sergio’s team before she’d joined and had been a peripheral member afterward, occasionally helping with tough team-oriented missions. Tori had asked her to be on the Helldivers mission before it’d started, which had eventually led to her running from the rogue Moderators. Coincidental or not, she didn’t associate the Helldivers mission with fond memories. Stacey had declined the invite, saying she had a photo shoot of some kind.

  Tyler and Michael were a pair of real-life brothers who lived in Chattanooga, Tennessee, she recalled as she watched them. Insufferable and inseparable, the duo was a handy pair in a fight. She’d met them in the Gladiator realm when she’d first been a noob to The Warp. They’d thoroughly kicked her butt and then, when she asked for help, took pity on her and assisted the new gamer. They’d quickly become friends, though they typically stuck to realms where they could brawl. Tyler was the talker of the two, both in game and out, while Michael preferred to be in the background, hulking and silent. It was funny to her, but they liked to role play, so she said nothing.

  She looked them over and smiled. For better or worse, this was going to be interesting.

  * * *

  Gargoyle looked up in annoyance. Something had triggered his alerts, but he couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. He finished setting up the coupling matrix and stood upright. He stretched his back and brushed his hands off onto his cloak. His eyes continued to scan the surface before finally spotting what had set off his silent alarm. It appeared to be a lone creature, native to the area.

  He checked his timer and nodded. He was well within his set parameters, so long as nobody interfered. He figured WarpSoft was already aware of the fact something was wrong, but since it was a benign problem they’d simply set it on the back burner until it became a bigger issue. At least, that was what he hoped would happen. Leo Champion had shown a surprising amount of resolve when it came to dealing with problems in the past, he recalled.

  “Just in case,” Gargoyle muttered and brought up a code. He quickly accessed the Chaos code and found the lines which directed the actions of the small creature. He manipulated one of the command lines and forced it to find more of its kind. He then directed them to encircle his location and hide in any manner they deemed fit. After a few more seconds he decided to add a secondary line to hide him from their sight, even when he was in their midst.

  It wouldn’t do for them to attack him as well.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 6

  Tori hated the environmental gear she was forced to wear while exploring the plains of Ganymede. The thin oxygen of the moon was far from enough to support human life, yet the gravity of the moon was strong enough to make any sort of going hard work. Thus, when she walked across the surface, a plasma rifle in hand—the only form of weaponry allowed in the plains—she could feel she was using too much oxygen. It was a huge potential problem and something she really didn’t want to deal with.

  Plus, she was really hoping to avoid some of the creatures that came with the game. They were far more dangerous than any gamer, she recalled, and there would be no dodging that gaming engine.

  Everything about The Warp revolved around certain rules. Physics could be bent, not broken. Gamers and Moderators alike avoided the hard penalties that would naturally occur when exposed to the radiation of Jupiter, but they still would have their character damaged by the lack of oxygen in the atmosphere. The Warp had quite a bit of give and take, which suited her just fine. If it’d taken itself too seriously, then nobody would’ve ever played. On the other hand, too much goofiness would’ve killed the hardcore gamer community’s interest.

  She stood still in the Ganymede breeze, confident in herself and her team’s ability to complete the task at hand. She frowned as dust kicked up from a nearby rock pile, and she watched it swirl about among the outcropping. She wondered if the breeze felt as cool as the environmental suit’s air circulation system did. Well, “cool” by her very narrow definition of the word. It was probably frigid outside the environmental containment suit. Or even colder, she guessed and turned the temperature control up a degree. She shifted her weight slightly and looked around at the others who had followed her out onto the plains to begin their search.

  They’d followed her initial instructions to the letter, spreading out slightly
, and all were heavily armed. Although plasma rifles were the only form of weaponry allowed on the plains, the rifle was a potent enough weapon to knock back a tank. The only drawback, she recalled, was that it was highly unstable and prone to some weird RNG stuff when it hit something.

  The RNG—random number generator—wasn’t anything new within videogames, though it was a more recent addition to the worlds within The Warp. It was added after some complaints were made that projectile weapons outclassed everything and it gave an unfair advantage to anyone using a hand weapon, like a sword. She’d thought the complaints were idiotic but acceded that in some worlds a submachine gun was a bit of overkill and removed some of the fun. She did think the whining in worlds such as Ganymede or Crisis were unfounded, but the programmers thought otherwise and introduced a randomness to the game.

  Instead of a .50 caliber round punching directly through a person’s armor, the probability of the armor saving the person or deflecting the round was randomized. Something that large was bound to hurt the person but it did add a small bit of randomness to smaller caliber guns and added protection to the armor some die-hards wore. She figured if a golf ball-sized sun hit someone, then no amount of praying to RNGesus would save them.

  The biggest difference was, while people often talked about the stopping power of a rifle round, the hardcore gamers of The Warp spoke about the unstoppable power of a plasma round. It took minutes for the energy of a plasma round to dissipate, which was more than enough time to barrel through a tank or six, the long way. She was immensely grateful these things weren’t out in the real world. The thought of some maniac unloading one on a commuter subway train scared her.

  One thing that made her happy was they were allowed to use their codes on the plains, which meant they had the ability to heal themselves should they get hit by something or someone and not be eliminated immediately. Their best healer, however, wasn’t out on the plains with them. She wasn’t happy with the decision, but she needed someone back inside in case it truly hit the fan. Shane hadn’t been happy about it, either, but since his codes could heal everything except elimination, he was the obvious choice to leave behind in reserve near the west entrance into the station while the others ventured out onto the plains and, eventually, into space. Plus, a locked bay door at the station would spell doom for her team. She shuddered. If that happened, they wouldn’t be able to get back inside the space station for a few days. They didn’t have enough oxygen to last that long.

  Hypoxia, even in a game, was no fun.

  Overhead, Jupiter came into view as Ganymede’s version of dawn began. The massive gas giant was even more beautiful than it was deadly, she’d decided earlier when the enormous planet had crested the horizon. Despite the fact humanity had never seen Jupiter up close in person outside of The Warp, it still didn’t prevent the game’s artists from dreaming up a conceptual masterpiece.

  Which it absolutely was. The red spot’s coloring varied in different hues as it spun. The gaseous clouds that made up the outer atmosphere of the giant planet were in brilliantly bright yellows and oranges, while the narrow ring surrounding it reflected light from both the sun and Jupiter itself. She could almost hear the sound those massive storm clouds made as they raced across Jupiter’s sky.

  “You think it’s here?” a whisper broke into her silent reverie. Tori jumped a little and restrained a vicious retort and a very unladylike string of curses. Instead she shook her head, the sealed environmental suit moving her helmet in the same motion. She glanced around but could only see a few discarded remains of alien bodies.

  “I don’t think so,” she replied over the frequency a few moments later. “I think it might be drawing power from the game somehow to keep itself powered, but Leo and Vilim insisted this was impossible. I don’t know. All I do know is I’m more afraid of running into something ugly that wants to eat me than some anomaly that could interfere with the games.”

  “Amen, sister,” Stacey replied in a low voice.

  “Ick,” Tyler whispered into his radio. “I think I stepped in alien sh—”

  “Language,” Tori warned. The others laughed.

  “Didn’t they use to call you ‘Bad Mouth Tori’?” Stacey asked. Tori blushed and looked down at her boots for a moment.

  “...no?”

  “Dude, I got an idea,” Tyler said suddenly and clicked over to Ganymede’s open frequency. It’d allow anyone within range of his suit to hear what he was broadcasting. “If you’re here, Mister Anomaly, come on out. Don’t make this difficult.”

  “I seriously don’t think it works like that,” Tori muttered but looked around hopefully nonetheless. However, when nothing happened, she continued, “I’m starting to think we should’ve started in space and moved inward to the moon’s surface for any signs of something ‘weird.’”

  “Movement,” Michael said suddenly, cutting off all conversation. Everyone outside with Tori dropped to one knee and brought their plasma rifles to their shoulders, save for Stacey, who instead seemed to shimmer for a moment before following suit.

  She looked across the plains but could see little outside of one hundred feet in front of her. The swirling dust seemed to be kicking up a small storm, deliberately obscuring her view. She swore softly under her breath. This is either one heck of a random Chaos effect, she thought as she swept her gaze back across the plain, or the game absolutely hates me.

  She slowed her breathing down and checked the others. Each was steady and still, waiting expectantly for the hammer to be dropped upon them. She thought back and frowned. What sort of anomaly are we hunting? Can it affect the game as well?

  “Switch to thermals,” she ordered suddenly as she flipped her visor down. Immediately the world turned into varying shades of purple, with the team glowing bright red and yellow in front of her. Royce was the brightest, with a huge thermal bloom. The others were only slightly less bright, with Stacey almost invisible on the heat spectrum. That explained the weird shimmer around her. She briefly wondered if anyone else might have thermal gear but then shrugged and went back to looking at the plains. “Too late now,” she muttered.

  “Target,” Tyler said, his voice sub-vocalized and low enough not to carry loudly over the radio. Tori glanced over at him and followed the barrel of his rifle. She blinked twice and grimaced. Sure enough, there it was. Whatever it was.

  She flipped off her thermals and was greeted with a sight that was terrifying in spite of the apparent innocent appearance of the creature. The small, shrew-like creature was knee high to them, rotund in a way only a furball could be, and was mindlessly digging in the dirt. It appeared to be looking for dinner and ignoring the team. Floppy eared and innocuous, it was one of the most feared aliens in the game. If memory served right, she figured the next thing the furball would do was pull out some sort of Ganymede slug. Disgusting, but edible for the highly carnivorous furball.

  She felt nervous sweat bead up and begin to roll down her back. She’d dealt with furballs before and carried not-so-fond memories of them. This lone one could be nothing more than a feral, one of the mindless ones which roamed randomly across the plains. They fed on the larvae-like slugs which had “adapted” in the virtual world and usually kept to themselves. They were mostly unintelligent, though they did maintain a certain basic animal cunning about them. Or, she thought, it could be something worse.

  “Feral?” she asked over the comm. The group collectively shrugged.

  “I don’t see any others,” Tyler reported. “Maybe we got lucky?”

  “I don’t know,” Stacey commented. “The dust storm is kind of convenient. I really don’t want to piss off a feral for no reason. But then, we can’t leave one of them alone, can we? We don’t need a synapse forming around us.”

  Tori heaved a weary sigh. Command decision time, she realized.

  “Drop it,” she ordered. A split second later a bright, flaming ball exploded the feral, sending random bits and pieces flying across the area and covering the
ground. The area was still silent after the furball exploded, the breeze blowing unabated. Have we gotten lucky? She looked around, tense. Are there others?

  There were two types of the furballs within Ganymede: the lone feral type, who hunted alone and was fairly easy for beginner players to defeat, and the much tougher synapse furball. The synapse furball was an experienced player’s worst nightmare; standing just over knee-high, it was nothing more than fangs, fur, and attitude. Just like a shrew, she recalled. The feral ones, everyone knew, were very dangerous in their own right. A synapse furball...

  Synapse was the bond between a feral pack, where the pack leader could feel the emotions and ideas of the other pack members. Acting as a similar bond between two brain cells, synapse occurs when two like-minded cells form a junction and begin to work together. The human brain is packed with millions of these. However, the game designers had decided furballs worked with synapses much differently.

  Enough ferals in one place often led to a natural synapse forming between the ferals. When this happened, the intelligence of the aliens grew as more of their brain patterns joined and the synapse connections were made. The larger the synapse pack, the greater the intelligence. She could remember a time when nobody went to Ganymede because the infestation of furballs was simply too great, and the aliens captured the station. The subsequent cleansing of the station had been brutal and drawn-out, leaving many good players eliminated in the wake of it all. Granted, the payout had been huge, and quite a few gamers jumped a few stars in reputation, but the dead character toll had been hideous. Synapses were rightly feared by all who played outside the safety of the Ganymede station.

  The worst thing, they all knew, was some sort of creature which developed synapses to control the ferals on its own. There had been rumors, stories told to new gamers as they arrived on Ganymede, of a giant alien with twice as many teeth, claws, and eyes as a regular furball alien, that players called a synapse lord. These were reported, investigated, and refuted. After all, the non-player characters within Ganymede station told a newcomer, if nobody had brought back a body after all these years, shouldn’t that mean they didn’t exist?