Arms folded, she hurried past burn barrels and gang members, most of whom gave her nods of acknowledgement, waves, or smiles. Being in this place felt far too much like being homeless. That worry got her maudlin over her inability to talk Nebraska into getting off the street, but it also reinforced her determination not to let CSI or some corrupt politician chase her away from her life―humble as it may be.
She stormed back over to the cargo container and flopped on the mattress by Eric. Only William remained logged into the game. Since the map positions had updated, she typed in the three sectors (now, now plus thirty minutes, and now plus one hour) on a note application in her smartphone, carried it over to where William lay, and sat beside him.
“Update,” said Dakota. “Now: AE184.48 GD102.20.”
While in the game, a player would hear sounds occurring in the real world as distant and ghostly. To be sure he got the coordinates, she waited a few seconds and repeated them before moving on to the ‘in thirty minutes’ set, and the hour away coordinates.
Christina yawned and rolled over.
“Hey Kota,” said her brother by the open end of the cargo box.
“Brass…” She looked over at him. “What’s up?”
“You eat anything yet?”
“Not since the burritos this morning.”
Nebraska walked in with a paper bag full of hamburgers. “Here. Julio’s kid sister works at the place a couple blocks over. Slips him a sack if she can get away with it.”
“Cool.” Dakota took a pair of basic cheeseburgers before holding the bag out to Christina.
“Ugh, do you know how bad those are for you?”
She shrugged. “Are they worse than starving?”
Christina sat up and took the bag. “Debatable, but thank you.”
“Huh?” Eric woke up when poked in the side. “You have food?”
Christina tossed him the bag. “Again, debatable.”
Her brother sank into a squat at her right, leaning his back against the wall. “Those dudes will regret it if they try any shit here.”
“We’re here because I’m hoping they can’t find it. But… thank you.” She patted his leg.
“So, when do you get to go back to your nice, clean apartment?” asked Nebraska.
“Clean is a matter of opinion, but it is nice.” Eric grinned before taking a bite of his second burger.
“Yeah… I have like important stuff to do. Moving clean clothes from the floor to the dresser isn’t one of them.” Dakota munched on her cheeseburger. “Not sure. We agreed on two days, which is tomorrow… so, I’m probably going to wind up talking to the cops.”
Nebraska gasped. “Shit, Kota, the cops? Seriously? You know they’re just a corporation like everything else.”
“Now you’re starting to sound like Dad. The police aren’t as bad as you think. I talk to them every damn day at work. They’re just people with jobs.”
“But―”
“There’s shitheads in every group.” She picked a bit of hardened cheese away from the paper the burger had been in and ate it. “Corporations manipulate the politicians who control the cops. I guess in a way, ‘trickle-down’ works.”
“Only if you’re talking about piss.” Nebraska hung his head, chuckling. “Oy. What happened to this country?”
“I don’t plan to be in this cargo box long enough to answer that.” She snuggled against Eric.
“Oh, look at you.” Nebraska waved his hand around randomly. “Next thing you know, you’ll wanna spawn, and you’ll have two, and a real job, and you’ll fade into the indistinguishable mass.”
Eric’s eyebrows shot up. “Whoa hold on now. Who said anything about married with kids?”
“You did.” Dakota turned her head to peer up at him. “Eric. I’m twenty-two. If that’s in my future, it’s not imminent.”
He overacted wiping sweat from his brow.
“But…” Dakota glanced down at her phone. “I’m not sure how many days I’ll be able to ‘call out sick’ before Hal replaces me. He’s cool and all, but it’s not like I’m vital.”
“Tell the dude someone kidnapped you,” said Eric.
“Already did. I’m not sure if he believed me, though.”
“But police?” asked Nebraska.
Eric shrugged. “I know, right.”
“Maybe that’s not such a bad idea,” said Christina.
“Cops will leave me alone,” said Shawn from the space between Christina and the wall, where he’d sacked out. “I’m only eleven, but you guys are pretty much screwed.”
Dakota shook her head while holding her hands (and burger) up. “I’m not going to make these people upend their lives. I hacked into the CSI network. If I talk to the cops, there’s a damn good chance I’m going to go to jail.” She savaged a chunk of hamburger off and chewed it fast. “No, wait. I’m gonna send it out there anonymously. I’ll set up an info packet ready to blast to the media with all the information about Steyr.”
“Right on,” said Nebraska, adding a slight nod.
She locked eyes with him. “I will take them down for that, but I don’t want to light myself on fire doing it if I can help it.”
“Sweet.” Eric leaned close. “What are you gonna do?”
Dakota mumbled, “I’m still thinking,” past a mouthful of food.
Incoming
33
“It’s here,” said William.
Everyone froze.
Dakota leaned forward to peer around Eric at him. “What do you mean by ‘it’s here?’”
William offered a weary smile. “Found a mission that sent me one sector away from the now-plus-one-hour. So, I went ‘afk’ and waited. The Reckoning just appeared. He lifted his helmet up, about to put it back on. “You guys up for it?”
“It’s go time!” yelled Shawn, while scrambling to crawl past the cloth partition to his PlayStation.
Eric grabbed his helmet. “Shit yeah, that’s a hard ship to find!”
“Mmf!” Dakota inhaled the rest of her second burger and grabbed her Neurona 4. “Brass… keep an eye open, huh? We’re gonna be out of it for a while.”
“You got it.” Nebraska sat by the cargo box entrance.
Dakota fired up her PS7, selected the Axillon99 client, and ran it before diving onto the mattress and jamming her helmet on. Heart racing, she lay flat and hit the button by her right temple.
“Synchronizing to game server. Welcome to Axillon99,” said the placid female voice.
The fetid air and mildew smell of her temporary bedding faded to the clean, metallic scent of the Stormbringer’s interior. With virtuality came a sense of confidence and immortality borne of respawns and impermanent death. Dakota Marx became Fawkes for the thousandth-some-odd-time. Her body appeared out of the darkness, warped bands of white gleaming across her almost-black chest armor. She stared down at her hands, the gadgets on her belt, the CL32 heavy laser pistol on her hip, and in that moment, she realized she belonged here.
This was reality. Not some helpless barista/hacker/wannabe-anarchist.
“I am Fawkes. I’m going to kick someone’s ass.” She struck a confident pose… for all of four seconds. “And I think I need some serious help.”
She laughed at herself before running down the hall to the bridge, where everyone else gathered.
Angel813 gave Nighthawk a squeeze. “Hey kiddo. You doing okay?”
He yawned. “Yeah, and please don’t call me kiddo in game.”
“Why?” asked Rallek. “Afraid it’ll hurt your chances with the ladies?”
Nighthawk looked over at him. “What?”
“Anyway!” yelled Kavan.
“Oh,” muttered Nighthawk. “That must’ve had something to do with sex. Dad only gets that awkward when someone starts talking about sex.”
“Anyway!” Kavan cleared his throat and pointed at the viewscreen. “Behold.”
A cyan box highlighted a small turd-like shape on the screen. Its dull matte-grey color ble
nded into the starscape so well it would’ve been almost impossible to see without the targeting aid.
“That teeny thing?” asked Angel813.
“It’s a sector and a half away,” said Nighthawk. “Holy crap.”
“So?” asked Angel813.
Nighthawk spun to look at her. “It’s far away and we can still see it. That means it’s effing massive.”
“We knew the Reckoning was a battlecruiser,” said Rallek. “That’s a capital ship.”
“Yeah, but”―Nighthawk gestured at the screen―“you could stab a planet with that thing.”
“Don’t panic yet.” Rallek edged up to the viewscreen. “Let’s get closer and see what we’re dealing with.”
Kavan tapped the console, increasing thrust. A faint wave of inertia made everyone else lean back.
The Reckoning gradually became larger. After six minutes, it filled the viewscreen and they still hadn’t gotten close enough to aggro it. What at first appeared to be a decorative pattern of ‘technology bits’ across the hull began to look like laser turrets as they neared―thousands of them.
“Damn…” whispered Rallek.
Fawkes clutched the back of the pilot’s seat. Her heart sank, dragging hope with it into a spinning black abyss. This thing had to be designed for a group of forty separate crews to take on. The largest raid composition possible. Forty corvettes, two-hundred players. The Stormbringer all by its lonesome wouldn’t even chip the paint on it.
“Sorry guys,” muttered Fawkes. “This isn’t happening.”
“You know, for a chance at two million bucks, I wouldn’t necessarily mind eating a one week lockout when we blow up.” Angel813 laughed.
“Thank you for not saying if and making me correct you.” Kavan exhaled hard. “What are the idiots at CSI thinking? How can anyone do this quest without a full raid group?”
“Maybe their plan all along was to give the ten million dollar prize to a raid group so like everyone gets fifty grand.” Rallek set his hands on his hips. “Companies have done lamer things than that in the past. The whole thing is a marketing gimmick anyway, right?”
“So a bunch of random people chase this quest for months, realize they can’t possibly kill the Reckoning without a full raid group… and all band together?” Fawkes scratched at her right eyebrow. “I can’t see that happening.”
Rallek patted her on the back, slid his hand down, and squeezed her ass. “People who spent months daydreaming about ten… or two million are gonna be pretty pissed off when all they get out of it is fifty grand.”
“That doesn’t make sense. Why the leaderboard then?” asked Nighthawk. “They showed individual ships there. That sounds like they’re saying, hey, these guys are close to getting the money.”
“Messing with us,” said Kavan. “Create the appearance that a single player or crew can win, so it stretches out as long as possible before they have to pay anyone.”
Fawkes pushed off the chair. “Well, so much for that. I’ll set up an infobomb to go out to the media. It’s late. Let’s sleep and I’ll go to the cops in the morning.” She started to trudge down the hall to her engineering room, but stopped when Nighthawk shouted, “Wait.”
“I got an idea.” Nighthawk’s head nearly blurred from looking back and forth between the viewscreen and Kavan so fast. “Let me fly the Stormbringer. That thing’s billion guns are useless if we get close enough. Capital ships have battery turrets to handle fighters on ‘trench runs,’ and those little lasers won’t do enough damage to a corvette’s shields.”
“That’s because corvettes don’t skim the hulls of capital ships,” said Kavan.
Nighthawk clutched Kavan’s shoulder. “I can do it. I can get us in there and stay away from the big guns.”
“That thing couldn’t even hit us with the big guns.” Rallek chuckled. “Why do they put enormous cannons on capital ships? No player can control a cap ship.”
“Yet,” said Angel813. “They’re talking about it in an expansion, once they figure out if they’re going to require large player crews or just make it all automated.”
“Trust me. I can pull it off,” said Nighthawk, sounding an awful lot like a kid despite the adult tenor in his voice.
Kavan swiveled the pilot’s chair to face everyone, mostly Nighthawk. “All right, let’s say you get us in there. What then? If that thing sat dead still and didn’t fight back, it would take us like twelve hours of continuous firing for our guns to put out enough damage to kill it.”
“This encounter is a raid.” Rallek shook his head. “It’s not meant for one crew. Hell, it’s not meant for twenty crews.”
Nighthawk flailed. “Yeah, but the rules don’t apply in space combat. It’s a twitch game. If I can fly the ship so it stays out of laser beams, we stay alive.”
“Okay, so what are we going to accomplish if you can even keep us alive?” asked Fawkes.
Rallek broke into pacing. Kavan pursed his lips.
Angel813 sat in the co-pilot’s chair and whipped out a small army of vanity pets. Soon, purrs, trills, mews, and cute alien noises filled the silence.
Hmm. Fawkes edged closer to lean on the pilot’s chair, and stared out at the menacing techno-icicle glimmering back at her. The hull had the color of dark silicon grey, flecked with a regular pattern of small luminous blue dots, perhaps windows or some unknown technology. More likely, the developers simply thought it looked cool. Awhile back, they’d even used images of the ship for promotional materials, but the planned storyline arc never materialized. In the whole span of the game, the crew of the Stormbringer were probably the only players to ever see the elusive battlecruiser ‘for real.’
“Wait.” Fawkes’ eyebrows shot up as an idea hit her. “I just realized something.”
“We’re galactically fucked?” asked Rallek.
Angel813 coughed. Nighthawk giggled.
“Guys. Now that you know Shawn’s only eleven, would you kinda try to ease back on the language?” asked Kavan.
“You sound like my boss.” Fawkes grinned. “Look at the size of that thing. It’s worth at least one f-bomb.”
“Dad only curses when he tries to fix things.” Nighthawk jumped back when Kavan tried to grab him. They had a brief staredown before both cracked up laughing.
“So you were saying?” asked Rallek.
Fawkes pointed at the Reckoning. “That ship was in the game from launch.”
“So?” asked Angel813.
“They didn’t create it for this prize. It’s always been here. The same way they used that pirate starbase for this quest even though it’s a raid. Maybe we don’t have to kill this thing at all. What if we have to board it? That fits with Will―uhh, Kavan’s theory that they’re trying to make this take as long as possible or even be so difficult it’s technically impossible. Who would ever think of boarding a world boss raid ship?”
“We got like six minutes until the thing warps out,” said Angel813. “If we’re going to do something, we should do it now.”
Nighthawk patted Kavan’s arm. “C’mon, Dad. Lemme take the stick. I can do this.”
“Okay, fine. Screw it. If we’re gonna eat a lockout, might as well.” Kavan got up.
“Going in. Hopefully, it won’t teleport out if we start the encounter.”
“We’re going to die,” said Rallek.
“Probably.” Nighthawk laughed. “But this is going to be epic.”
Fawkes ran down the hall to the engineering station. “I’m gonna slot four shield boosters to keep us alive long enough to find something.”
“What are we looking for?” shouted Rallek.
“Anything. Docking bay, a door, a hole, some way to get inside,” shouted Fawkes while twisting a fictional screwdriver-like tool at the shield generator unit. One by one, the metal-plated icons for shield booster buffs appeared in the ‘tray’ on the screen.
Acceleration made her slide a few inches toward the back of the room.
“Uhh,” yelled Ni
ghthawk. “You guys might wanna hold on to something or grab a chair. This is going to get… spinny.”
Fawkes scrambled into the seat she rarely used and put on the belt as the background music changed to the space combat track. Alarms rang out indicating an enemy vessel had targeted them. “Shit, I should’ve slotted at least one missile decoy.”
She punched the fourth shield booster, using it up, and grabbed a different tool that resembled a soldering iron, which she manipulated at the sensor console. That combination of ‘tool’ with ‘component’ resulted in a short-lived defensive cooldown that neutralized the guidance systems of incoming missiles.
Hope it works on raid bosses.
The Stormbringer lurched into a hard spiraling maneuver that would’ve flung Fawkes out of her chair if not for the belt. She yelped and braced her boot on the console while grabbing the seat on either side of her ass. When she glanced left down the corridor to the bridge, a black blur flashed by from left to right. A heavy whump happened next, followed by Rallek moaning.
“Holy crap. That did health damage,” said Rallek.
Nighthawk’s voice strained as if he attempted to lift something too heavy. “That missile would’ve done a whole lot more.”
The spiral came to an abrupt stop, tossing Fawkes against her seatbelt in the other direction. She gasped from the shock to her abdomen, but held on. Somewhere deep in the ship, a sound like boxes of metal fragments bouncing down stairs echoed.
“Wow,” said Kavan from the bridge. “The physics engine is getting a workout.”
Rallek chanted some of his made up nonsense and a pale shimmering light washed over the floor, walls, and ceiling, creeping from the bridge end to the rear. “Did that do anything?”
“Uhh,” yelled Nighthawk.
The Stormbringer whipped back and forth, pitching and rolling. Every so often, the room shuddered with a minor impact and a loud digitized squelching noise―the sound effect for an energy weapon strike on shields. It alarmed her somewhat that she could tell from the briefness of the noise that the laser blasts skipped off the shield bubble in shallow angle grazes rather than direct hits.
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