by G Aliaksei C
“Comfort Dome?”
“No.” I wasn’t even quite sure that was.
The last mech saluted and jogged away towards the construction zone. There was a definite sharpness to Jim’s actions, as if he was trying to please with every motion and word. Without a doubt it had something to do with my Corporate nature, but I could not guess what a machine on the Rings would want out of me. I wandered about, stopping at the edge of the construction zone to look over the pit where a large cement structure was being dug in, several meters underground.
The tank and robot platoon were a physical manifestation of my new debt, several million credits in loans, and most of my credits in deposits. Yet their presence was more reassuring than any sum of money in my wallet.
Another local week, ten long days, passed. A solid wall with three large gates now completely connected the eight towers. Several times a day Wolves would appear in the distance, every time in growing numbers. Five times the Beasts tried to charge, twice managing to enter melee range. Jim was excellent at picking the running Beasts off, killing as many as possible before I had to step in with my axe.
“Jim,” I asked the nearest mech after the first engagement, trying to blink away the spots in my eyes. “Do my eyes deceive me? Are there hallucinogens in the air? Or is that really a laser weapon you just blinded me with?”
“It is indeed, Mr. Frost!”
“Jim, tell me, whose bright, oh-so-bright idea was it to issue laser rifles in an atmosphere?”
“It is the cheapest heavy weapon we have, Mr. Frost. Is there an issue?”
“An issue? Only if you have issues with physics!” The light’s dissipation rate in the fog was massive, and I was amazed the laser had enough power to harm the Wolves at this range. Quite possibly any other weapon type would have been more practical than these oversized flashlights. Worse, they acted like flashlights in this weather, flashing the whole storm white.
Stealth was, apparently, never an option.
On the plus side, I quickly learned how to fight the Beasts in a melee. On clear days I could handle three of them at once, surviving with only a few deep wounds.
After the fifth attack I stood over the bodies of those wild creatures, beings with metal armor for skin and green blood in their veins. I thought about my immortality. In only five days I learned, through trial and blood, how to kill these beings, and became significantly better at it. Having never even met wolves before now, and certain that the original animal had armor instead of fur, I felt this could be classified as a brand-new skill for me.
I had learned and improved my skills to a point of comfort in a matter of days. But I had centuries ahead of me. How good could I be at killing wolves after a year, or ten years? How much could I learn in a hundred years, knowing that another hundred would come around, understanding that I had all the time in the world?
I could even learn to cook!
The last four packages arrived, and I received the notification that the automated transport in orbit above, responsible for dropping packages on my head all this time, was empty and leaving. Three of the containers held lab equipment and workbenches - my largest personal expense so far. The bots unloaded them, hauling the items down to the freshly dug underground bunker.
The final package contained the Waypoint system, a tall tower-frame that was quickly installed atop my new home. The system included vast server arrays, an oversized Gem, and a powerful wireless node. Activating the system and connecting it to the sensor network I logged in, filling out the required information - name, services, access.
Name… I sat on that for a time, finally typing in the English letters. I was, likely, the only person alive who spoke the language, but whatever method the Ring occupants used to communicate across species and race would ensure the tone and meaning behind the letters would be conveyed to any who read and spoke it.
Vazanklav.
Services - parking, aircraft landing, food, refueling, maintenance. Just because the light fuel tanks stationed near the bland foam-concrete landing pads were empty didn’t mean I wasn’t going to mention the possibility of them being full.
The waypoint pinged, adding a subscript to the name ‘Vazanklav’ with a smaller ‘outpost’ marker.
Through my Menu I used the World Map to zoom onto the Monument and saw the new location almost on top of the landmark. We were visible to everyone now.
Open for business.
The rest of the day was spent unpackaging and drooling over the equipment. I was fresh out of cash, but had everything I needed to make it all back.
As a child I dreamed of a castle atop the tallest and coldest of mountains, where I could work on amazing creations without the interruption of the world washing by. I dreamt of creating incredible items that the world could use, without having to know where they had come from.
I had lost that dream when The War baptized me and my brother in fire.
But that childhood dream would come true now - all I needed was to make my break, and to accomplish this I had the ultimate advantage over every single champion in this vast arena the Corporate had created with my magic - I knew how all worked.
After all, I had invented the magic. To me, it was just technology.
I began by dissecting larger Gems. The assembly of the delicate internals required the shell to be in eight parts, connected with permanent gravity seals. Undoing the seals was a matter of placing the Gem in a mash of correct gravitational frequencies. Finding the right combination I watched the Gem fall apart into eighths, exposing the insides.
The core was significantly more well-made than the prototypes I had created in the past. These were clearly designed for mass-production, with numerous modern technologies in play. It was maddening to look at my own work, completed by someone else. Many details were beyond my comprehension, but at least the whole of the design was the same at the core.
After ten thousand years this had to be ancient technology for the Corporate.
And I had ideas on how to edit it.
The builders of the Rings had made their Gems different in power at a physical level, not just programming. The Gem before me was a Class 2, and would never be anything more than that without burning out.
Emphasis on ‘without burning out’.
I attempted to access the software of the Gem, intent on tearing it apart just as I did the hardware. To my grief, the code used was completely alien to me. I had no clue what any of it meant, how to read it, or even the language it was in. I didn’t even have a redactor that could edit it. Bringing up the browser I connected to the Rings Network through the Waypoint, trying to find reference to Corporate code, and failed. Everything used on the Rings seemed so… civilian and simple, opposite of the arcane language controlling the Gem.
Approaching the problem from a different angle I dug into the mechanics of the Gem, cataloging every bit and part of it. After hours of work I had the entire system mapped out on paper, to the most minute detail. Without pause I rebuilt the Gem, locked the parts together, made sure it still worked, and repeated the process with another.
At some point I snorted awake at the sound of the intercom singing my name. Jim had tried to start conversations several times over the days, bringing coffee every morning to the lab, and was severely disappointed by my unresponsiveness to his pleasantries - I had little respect for security grunts interrupting my work.
Getting up from behind the desk I stretched and looked at my Menu.
“Yes, Jim?”
“Good morning Mr. Frost! We have inbound - one aircraft. They are hailing.”
“What channel?”
I sat behind the radio station in the corner of my lab, put on headphones, and turned the equipment on. It was the sturdiest, most basic unit I could find on the market. Few even knew how to use it, but the raw power and adjustability of the system allowed it to function through the Waste Ring’s raging interference.
While I was connected to the Waypoint and was in contac
t with the Rings network, the aircraft had no such luxury, and had to be contacted through more primitive means.
Feeling like a rebel in my underground hideout I switched the transceiver into high power mode and began tuning the frequency with the main knob.
“Monument, do you read? This is Ice Wall Mercenaries scout! Monument, do you read?”
“This is Vazanklav, I read you Ice Wall scout, how do you hear me? Over.”
“I hear you well Vazanklav, we are heading orbitward and will lose you in a few minutes. Vazanklav, are you Ice Wall or Concord sanctioned? Over?”
“Negative Ice Wall, we are on our own. Over.”
“Vazanklav, you crazy son of a frog, be advised, we are scouting for…” The channel hissed, blacked out, and snapped on a second later, “…repeat, scouting for rogue White Specter! Do you copy, over?”
“Ice Wall, please confirm, White Specter in vicinity?” Where had I heard that name?
“Confirmed Vazanklav, White Specter estimated to pass ten kilometers from this location! Stand by for vector, over!”
“Standing by for vector, over.”
“Vector estimates: eighty-two degrees left of counterorbit, heading right of counterorbit, tangent point from Monument fifteen kilometers orbitward. I repeat….”
I grabbed a ruler and the map laying on the table nearby, and charted a diagonal line across the landscape, then repeated the values over the radio.
“…fifteen kilometers orbitward. Confirm, over?”
“Confirmed Vazanklav. We admire your resolve to live out here without a Comfort Dome, without a Gate, but unless your resolve is also fireproof, we recommend you evacuate, over.”
“Negative Ice Wall, we have nowhere to go. Feel free to land here if needed, over.”
“Losing… out of range… best of luck, over.”
“Best of luck to you, Ice Wall. Over and out.”
I took off the headphones and spoke into the call, my Menu still floating next to me.
“Jim, did you hear that?”
“Yes Mr. Frost. I am already calling up my command chain.”
“Tell me if you get anything.”
I ended the call and opened the browser. The same Archive that supplied most of my knowledge about the Rings now floated before me, open on the ‘Shadows’ page.
White Specter.
Thought to be the fourth type of Shadow, ranked above the Shimmer, Shade and Dark.
Thought to be the only known type of Class 10 Boss Beast.
It is thought that a White Specter is located at the center of most Class 9 Hotzones.
There is no record of a White Specter being killed.
Possesses a single weapon in the form of a sword. Capable of destroying any combat unit within a kilometer of itself.
Only engages combat units in motion within one kilometer of itself.
Appears permanently stationary.
A huge floating creature, vaguely Humanoid, with large extrusions on the back, a sword-like weapon in hand.
Does not engage other Beasts.
Is never engaged by other Beasts.
Two hundred recorded attempts were made to destroy a White Specter.
The highest factor of force used against a White Specter was a Class 9 mobile anti-fortress disruptor. Proven ineffective.
Void be my air, I thought, this is a catastrophe. It’s supposed to be ‘permanently stationary’. So why is it moving?
Jim called me again, breaking me out of panicked reading.
“I was just briefed on the situation, Mr. Frost.”
“Thoughts?”
“Yes sir. ‘Holy fuck’.”
“Indeed.”
“Ice Wall Mercenaries have accepted the defense contract put up by the Monument Town once the boss discovered where the operation will be occurring, and that our bitter rivals, Concord, will be there.”
“What does your boss care for this location?”
“I am unaware.”
I looked at the map and frowned.
The line depicting the White Specter’s heading passed directly through the Gate Town.
Hellish weather. A Hotzone of biological monsters orbit-ward, another Hotzone of rogue war machines counterorbit. A severe debt.
And, now, some powerful monster was on a course through my grave, while a mercenary company set up defenses to ambush it at the nearest Gate.
Exciting times.
2 : White Specter
Day 12
Before the start of The War Humanity created a word-wide digital network called the internet. This could easily be considered the prime Human achievement of the decade. The War tore that network up, each of the three factions rebuilding their own, internal version within the year. Almost every defining feature of the internet carried over - the surveillance and data-gathering algorithms, the obscene amounts of pornography and animal pictures, the endless trivia and the abundant stupidity of people. One of the prime psychological releases from years of constant bloodshed and death became video games, one of the few escapes from life that both isolated the mind from the reality of The War, and connected with people across the Corporation. The friends made in these games were no different from the friends made in person, and we often found ourselves asking real favors of people we’d never met in person.
And that made losing them just as bad.
At the end of every session, every evening, we said our goodbyes and went to sleep, never knowing just how permanent the goodbye was. The next day we could log in, and see that our squad was one short. Friend lists turned red as, one by one, the ‘Last Seen’ counter turned from a week, to a month, to a year, and we knew that our squadmate wasn’t simply taking a break from the game - they were, one way or another, dead.
Knowing for sure was always better than forever hoping for the unlikely. Often someone who knew who the missing squadmate outside the game would speak up.
“…shot in battle…”
“…died of radiation poisoning…”
“…captured…”
We never removed the dead from our contacts.
Once the agony of withdrawal lessened in the mornings I started opening my eyes to the realization that all of them were forever inactive now. At some point I had become the one who showed up inactive on the list, until the whole list went red and disappeared altogether. They were gone, and only I remained to remember them.
And for all the mental modification, the Corporate never learned to convert pain to hate all the way.
On the third day of such morbid awakening I wrote down every single name on my relatively short ‘friends list’, names that now only existed in my memory, memory serving well to ensure no name was misspelled. The list hung on the wall in the lab under my bunker now, a stupid looking series of names, with numbers, inappropriate words, terrible capitalization, and an aura of dread that only I felt. It was their only memory in a world they never lived to see.
It lessened my sense of obligation, the need to remember a life I lost. The list made it easier to sleep, and fueled my urge to work.
There are several well-known issues with living away from civilization. The basic requirements of shelter, food and water are not enough - I needed resources, weapons, power, and communication with the outside world.
Water was the least of my concerns - the pump near the monument provided plenty of crystal, clean, refreshing water. Power and communication were not an issue either, the stability of both ensured by Gems.
The issues lay in more massed items. Food, maintenance equipment, ammo and shelter were both questionable. An alternating assault of ice, fire and plasma bolts wore down walls, sensors and outdoor equipment. Repairs to the wall and buildings, in turn, stressed the foam-concrete bots. All this had to be delivered with automated transports from space - an incredibly expensive service.
Note how I mentioned plasma bolts? Let me explain.
Amid hours in the lab I forced myself to step out of the bunker for a breath of fresh
air. The glowing ash let up somewhat, allowing me to walk outside without a helmet. My timing today was impeccable - several Jims ran past, toward the nearest section of the wall. I followed, curious.
Four of the mechs lined the parapet, pointing their guns off the wall. Another Jim leapt off, gracefully landing over the wall and jogging somewhere counterorbit. For a two-ton machine, the Jims were incredibly smooth and agile. I tracked his path forward through the fog, and finally spotted the target.
It was a lumbering thing, barely visible through the fog - a four-meter-tall, eight-legged crawler, far larger than any machine I had yet seen on the Rings. Rust and dents covered its armor, and pulsing green veins seemed to intertwine with exposed hydraulics and joints, flowing under disfigured metal. The thing pushed out of the gray curtain, dragging itself towards us.
If Jim’s polished armor stood out in the hellish landscape like a brand-new car in a junkyard, then this crawler seemed in uniform with the rocks and dirt it traversed, making me wonder how long it would take to spot were it immobile.
As the Jim approached it the crawler stopped, and two hatches opened on its back. One was empty, with torn off wires and pipes spewing smoke. The other housed some sort of oversized weapon, a mess of wires, green veins and metal that creaked into position, rotating to track the leading Jim.
The four mechs on the walls opened fire. What could only be pulse lasers of glorious power burned through the fog, lighting up the valley for a tiny fraction of a second. An incredibly impractical weapon in the atmosphere, the beams nevertheless proved powerful enough to do the job. When the spots in my eyes cleared I saw a molten wreck where a cannon just was on the machine. It twitched several times, discharging a fireball in an attempt to fire, then stopped moving. The creature, meanwhile, rose to meet the charging Jim with four raised limbs.
Jim slid through the crushing attacks, under the creature, and stabbed up with an oversized knife that, in my hands, would have been a sword. The attack was practiced and precise, deserving of respect. He kept moving, several tones of metal unwilling to stop easily, sliding back out as the machine tried to crush him between its massive hull and the ground.