“Not sure. I didn’t upgrade. Waiting for a sale. They’re a bit steep right now.”
“Are they?” asked Fawkes. “Eric got me one.”
“Look at Mr. Moneybags,” said Angel813. “Someone’s getting some tonight.”
Kavan coughed. “We’re approaching the target.”
“How much are they?” asked Fawkes, a twinge of guilt in her voice.
“About five big ones,” said Angel813.
“Shit, Eric, you spent $1000 on this game?” asked Fawkes, her mouth open.
“Well, the helmets aren’t just for Axillon99,” said Rallek. “But yeah. And don’t feel guilty. I ain’t hurtin’ that bad. Call it an early birthday gift.”
Fawkes grinned. “Okay. I think I might have something for you later tonight.”
“Battle stations!” yelled Kavan.
She smirked. They still had a few minutes of flying left. Kavan wanted to change the subject as he always did whenever topics got interesting. She pitied him for being the world’s biggest prude. “Hey Kav, why do you always get uncomfortable whenever we talk about sex-type stuff? Are you like a priest or something?”
“Dude seriously needs to get some,” said Rallek.
Nighthawk cracked up laughing so hard he sounded like he’d choke to death.
Kavan remained quiet.
Four minutes later, Rallek said, “Activating the transponder.”
The mission came with a transponder item that made the Stormbringer appear on sensors as a large, slow, unarmed freighter. According to the quest, they needed to fly to this system and activate the device. That would lure the Scarlet Saber out to attack, thinking them a juicy target for a pirate. Boots clanked on metal in the hall from Rallek and Angel813 running to turrets, one along the top of the ship, the other at the bottom.
The Stormbringer had a relatively sleek design for a corvette. From the nose, the sides curved outward in a bullet shape, became straight until the one-third point, then flared out to a delta wing. It had a fairly thin profile from the front, rear, or side, which made it a difficult target in a fight unless the opponent approached from above or up from below. As ships of it size class went, it ranked about mid-grade for armor and weapons, low on cargo space, but high on maneuverability, essentially being the most ‘fighter like’ of the medium ships.
She stopped boosting speed, tossed the ‘screwdriver’ shaped tool back on the table, and grabbed an electric gizmo with two waving antennas. When she pointed it at the shield generator, a soft thrum permeated the whole ship. A twenty percent boost to shield points would help in the event of an ambush.
Overhead speakers crackled to life with a cocky male voice with a hint of nasality. “Jettison your cargo if you want to li―Oh… you’re not a freighter. Never mind that then, there’s no living for you.”
“Contact,” shouted Kavan.
Fawkes opened a spectator window, which allowed players inside the ship to watch the space action from a ‘chase camera’ view. The Scarlet Saber had appeared in the distance with a pair of fighter ships flying escort.
Four bright green beams in two pairs streaked across space toward the Stormbringer. Kavan rolled the ship so the attack passed harmlessly above and below. An air-blast noise announced Nighthawk launching his fighter.
Rallek yelled some nonsense words, ad-libbing his magic while tossing the Symbiote spell through the Stormbringer’s hull into the departing Gremlin. “You’re enchanted, ’Hawk.”
“Awesome. Yeah I see the buff icon.”
The arrowhead-shaped Gremlin flew straight toward the enemy ships, offloading a blistering array of particle beam fire. Scintillating orange-red streaks shredded one of the smaller escort fighters in seconds, sending it into a spiral tumble that culminated with a dazzling explosion more like fireworks than a spacecraft’s death. Incoming fire passed within inches of the Gremlin, but nothing could touch him.
Kavan whistled. “Wow. That’s almost like cheating.”
“Everyone says that about gunslingers,” said Rallek. “Why do you think people assume everyone who plays one is like twelve years old?”
“I’m not twelve,” grumbled Nighthawk.
Kavan hit the booster, which kicked the ship forward for a brief but severe moment of acceleration. The Scarlet Saber, being a more cargo-oriented corvette, had about half again the armor and shields of their ship, but also the maneuverability of a box. While Nighthawk and the other fighter went after each other, Kavan flung the Stormbringer into an aggressive dive, triggering Fawkes’ shield modification. He flew straight into a barrage of neutron beams, exploiting the thirty seconds of near-immunity, and settled in on the larger ship’s tail.
“Holy cow, that’s a corvette. It’s not supposed to be able to fly like that,” said Kavan, ad-libbing the lines their computer-controlled opponent would never say.
Rallek and Angel813, in the turrets, peppered the Scarlet Saber’s shields with red pulse lasers since Nighthawk kept the other escort fighter well away from their ship. The Stormbringer lacked the specialized ‘crippling’ weaponry of the pirate vessel, but any ship could try to do enough damage to a target’s engines to shut them down. Once a craft drifted dead in space, they could dock and board it for the on-foot part of the mission.
Kavan fired blast after blast from the main laser cannons into the back end of the Scarlet Saber. Dark sapphire-hued beams pelted the ungainly ship, which couldn’t swerve fast enough to evade. With each shot, scintillating bursts of light in the shape of shield domes flickered over the enemy craft, along with purple-pink wisps of flame. The pirate swerved side to side, twisting and climbing, but succeeded only in making Kavan miss once.
“Bring it in closer and I’ll hit him with Fail,” said Rallek.
“Oh, they’re already covered in fail,” said Nighthawk.
“No, it’s a spell. It’ll shut their ship off for a few seconds.”
“Workin’ on it,” Kavan’s strained voice leaked past his teeth. “He’s really pushing that thing. It’s gotta be modified. Heron class corvettes aren’t supposed to turn this tight.”
“It’s a quest boss. Probably has cheated stats,” said Angel813.
The Gremlin raced by, strafing particle beams across the Scarlet Saber’s nose.
“Engines, engines, engines,” yelled Kavan.
“Gotta get through the shields first. Doesn’t matter where I aim until the shields are down,” said Nighthawk.
Kavan pulled in close, lining up a perfect shot at the back end of the pirate vessel. An instant before he fired, the enemy ship’s rear exploded in a fireworks flower. Six anti-ship missiles spiraled out, leaving a pinwheel pattern of energy trails. Fawkes mashed the button for the guidance-scrambling buff while both turrets started firing at the incoming weapons.
All six torpedoes went around the Stormbringer, detonating harmlessly a good distance behind it.
“Holy shit,” muttered Kavan. “I wasn’t expecting that… who loads rear-mounted missile tubes at all, much less six of them?”
“A quest boss,” muttered Rallek. “Guarantee that ship doesn’t actually have that weapon on it if we were to steal it.”
Fawkes blinked. “That’s an option? You can just board and take a ship?”
“Sorta. We’d be able to fly it until we docked somewhere… then the ‘authorities’ would confiscate it.”
“Oh, that’s lame,” muttered Fawkes.
“Yeah, well, if players could just steal ships, it would be too easy to get them.” Kavan clucked while putting a barrage of particle beam into the rear end of the pirate vessel. “They gotta make us work for it.”
“Or buy it,” said Rallek.
“Touché.” Kavan laughed. “I regret nothing. I got this game for the flying, and skipping three months of crappy quests only to be given a wind-up toy of a ship was worth it. Nothing sadder than a pilot without a ship.”
The Scarlet Saber’s shields faltered and collapsed, sending a ghostly disc of white light expanding into space. A
sudden eruption of red lightning crackled around the walls in the engineering room and filled the air with the flavor of questionable eggs.
Fawkes screamed. “Something just hit us!”
“Relax,” said Rallek. “That was me. Targeting buff.”
She shied away from the crackling mass of electricity, gagging on the stink of it. “It reeks! Isn’t sulfur demonic? And why does a buff smell bad?”
“It smells?” asked Rallek, sounding surprised. “Oh, how about that. It does. Smells like ozone to me.”
“Smells like your socks,” said Nighthawk over the comm.
“You’re not even in the ship!” shouted Rallek.
The Stormbringer hummed as the main laser cannons fired. In the spectator window, the Scarlet Saber rocked from an explosion at the rear end by the row of four round engine ports. Three of the glowing blue spots went dark, leaving one engine functioning. Fawkes staggered to the left when the ship decelerated rapidly. The pirate hung ‘dead in the water,’ vulnerable to a boarding attack.
“Coming in,” said Nighthawk.
Kavan guided the Stormbringer into docking position, hovering over a port at the midpoint of the pirate ship’s underside. The two vessels came together belly to belly with a frighteningly loud clank. Answering creaks and groans in the frame sounded like the protests of a submarine going below crush depth.
“Is that normal?” yelled Fawkes.
“Yeah,” shouted Kavan. “You should do your override thing now.”
“Right!” Fawkes hopped on a terminal, and with a few clicks, began a technological attack on the pirate vessel.
The hacking mini-game came up, and she raced the red line to the hostile CPU node. Her character’s skill allotment made it a trivial task. So easy, in fact, she hit all six bonus nodes, picking up an extra 2,800 credits and two Worm modules, one-use disposable software helpers that functioned somewhat like buff spells, except program code instead of magic. The Worms didn’t impress her that much. Since she’d focused on hacking skills, she rarely needed the temporary boosts to succeed, so she’d stocked up a large amount of them.
As soon as her green line hit the CPU, she got into the enemy ship’s computer. This opened a control interface for the other ship. She shut down the weapons and navigation controls, unlocked the boarding hatch, and opened all the interior doors.
“All gift wrapped,” said Fawkes. “Let’s do it.”
Everyone met in the main room by the round table. Angel813 didn’t look happy, but didn’t exactly seem pissed off either. Kavan led the team down the corridor to the airlock access. A blast of freezing air came by as the door opened, making everyone shiver except Angel813.
“You know, I’m starting to wonder if the new helmet is an advantage or not.” Fawkes rubbed her hands up and down her arms, shivering. “Damn… it’s seriously cold in here. I could legit cut glass right now.”
Nighthawk stared at her with a note of confusion in his expression.
Kavan shouted, “Come on,” and charged down the boarding tube.
A device on his shoulder projected a forward-facing energy shield around his rifle. The outer hull door of the Scarlet Saber opened with a simple button-press, as Fawkes had already neutered the security system. They advanced into a surprisingly clean hallway of polished steel.
“Hmm. Guess space pirates gotta keep the place tip top for guests,” said Rallek.
Kavan glanced left and right. “Let’s deal with this pirate, then check the cargo hold.”
At mutual assent from the other four, he faced to the right and advanced toward the bridge. Nighthawk hovered close behind, his guns up. Rallek reached out as if to grab something out of thin air. A half-length staff appeared, metal and covered with glowing circuitry lines. Two puzzle-cubes orbited the head end. So far, he’d been the only one in the crew to get a purple weapon drop, and much to Fawkes’ annoyance, it had been an item for a magic user.
She walked side by side with him behind the two pilots.
Angel813 brought up the rear, carrying a clear shield in her left hand that looked like a flimsy piece of plastic. Tiny medical bots, floating four-inch spheres, hovered around her, awaiting commands. She’d put most of her levels into medic, but threw a few into technomancer for some synergistic bonuses to her medical equipment. According to the mechanics of the spell, the little medi-bots counted as ‘summoned minions,’ so she could buff them.
A hatch on the left side of the corridor twenty feet ahead opened, and five man-sized robots clambered out, raising weapons. Kavan activated a wider group shield to give the party cover from incoming laser blasts while simultaneously firing a sweeping full-auto barrage in an effort to concentrate all the enemies’ attention on him.
Fawkes used Flicker to insta-hide. By the time her Shadowblink ability teleported her behind the robot attackers, Nighthawk had already demolished two of them. She lined up a shot on the far-left robot since it kept trying to shoot past Kavan to hit Angel813. The middle one launched a small rocket, which detonated into a large swath of burning ground under the other four characters. Fawkes’ ambush attack struck the robot going after the medic in the back, blasting it apart into a spray of parts. A large red ‘954’ appeared above it, flashing to indicate a critical hit.
Holy shit!
Nighthawk stood still, continuing to shoot at the remaining two bots while everyone else backed up out of the flames. Angel813 grabbed and threw her small orbs at everyone. The tiny flying robots zoomed into orbit around the other characters, projecting green ‘healing beams’ at them. Two on Nighthawk kept his health bar from going down, hovering at about forty percent. She added a third heal bot, and the line began to creep up to full.
“Damn, did you just hit that one for like nine hundred?” yelled Nighthawk.
“She’s got like a 3.5 times multiplier on critical hits from ambush,” said Rallek as he waved his staff. Both remaining bots went still, heads bowed as if they’d fallen asleep on their feet.
Kavan, Nighthawk, and Fawkes peppered them with laser fire, destroying them before the paralysis spell wore off.
Fawkes did a little victory dance, hugging her weapon. “I love this thing. Holy crap did you see that hit!?”
“Yeah,” said a rather sullen Nighthawk, jamming his pistols back in their holsters.
“Hey man.” Rallek clapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t hate. She’s gotta hide to do that kind of damage, and she only gets it once or twice in a whole combat. Takes her three times the effort just to keep up with a gunslinger. In the time she did 900, you hit four times for 320 or so.”
“Oh.” Nighthawk smiled. “Yeah, right.”
Fawkes grinned to herself. Level forty-eight and I’ll become one with the shadows. She daydreamed of pulling off huge ambush attacks with impunity, wondering what sort of whining would come out of Nighthawk when that day arrived. Granted, she’d never have the multi-target abilities he would, but area-of-effect didn’t kill raid bosses… unless they had tons of summoned adds.
Angel813 shot Nighthawk an annoyed look while topping off his health bar.
They fought their way past four more sets of robots to the bridge door, where the captain of the Scarlet Saber waited with his crew as well as his cheesy overdone suaveness and large chin. His hair even sparkled whenever the light hit it at a certain angle.
“Well, it seems I underestimated your piloting skills,” said the pirate, patting the guns on his hip. “Perhaps we can come to a lucrative arrangement.”
Crap. He’s a gunslinger. Fawkes edged behind a control console and dropped into stealth.
“I don’t see that happening,” said Kavan.
The pirate’s four friends fidgeted with weapons. A skinny guy in back had a medic’s kit on his belt, so he became Fawkes’ primary target. Next to him stood a dark-haired woman with an eyepatch and a facial scar. Her armor looked light, and she carried a pair of energy blades instead of guns.
“They have an assassin,” said Fawkes over party
chat. “Eric, watch Angel.”
“You got it.” Rallek nodded at her.
Angel813 retreated a few steps, putting her back against the wall.
“How much can I offer you to walk away?” asked the pirate.
“Release the slaves in your cargo hold and maybe I’ll think about it,” said Kavan.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch that.” The pirate tilted his head.
“He’s only going to respond to a number,” said Nighthawk.
Kavan glanced over his shoulder at the crew. “Is it possible to talk this guy down?”
“Nah,” said Rallek. “Even if we give him a number he agrees to, he’s going to backstab us when we try to leave. This is a simple mission. Combat or combat.”
Fawkes tried to creep into the room, but an invisible wall blocked her. “Ugh, that’s cheap. I can’t get in position until the fight starts.”
“Hah.” Nighthawk grinned. “Getting around behind them before the fight is cheap. But yeah, I guess it’s lame to have a barrier.”
“Sorry, pal,” said Kavan. “I’m afraid your pirate days are over.”
“Really?” asked Rallek. “When did we wind up in a B movie?”
Nighthawk snickered.
“I guess you didn’t understand me,” said the pirate. “What’s your price?”
“Aww, hell with this.” Kavan shot him in the chest.
The green laser dispersed in a blast of light on contact, leaving a small char mark and dropping the pirate’s health bar by about eight percent. The background music shifted gears to an energetic ‘combat’ track. Their assassin disappeared into thin air, the other three dove for cover behind consoles, and the pirate shimmered with a faint glowing effect while pulling his pistols.
“He’s using Showdown,” yelled Nighthawk. “Don’t bother trying to shoot him for like a minute.”
“Ugh. I hate boss fights,” muttered Angel813.
“That’s because you don’t read the strats,” said Nighthawk, while firing at a rifle-bearing crewmember.
Fawkes scurried around the room, keeping her head down as laser bolts streaked back and forth. The pirate laughed between firing off shots, standing impervious in the open to incoming attacks. Nighthawk had taken cover, likely saving his Showdown for once the pirate became vulnerable. Rather than go for their medic, Fawkes circled back around to the outer corner that offered her a clean view of her crew. On one knee, she raised her CL32 and aimed in the general direction of Angel813.
Axillon99 Page 9