by Alex Knight
Titus’ Improved Shield Charge and Kaiden’s Hamstring had given them a head start on Werner, but now it was dwindling. The only boon was that the power wardens that had been with him had disappeared. Fallen behind, maybe? Kaiden didn’t have time to worry about it because what Titus had said earlier had been right. Shuttles and other vehicles always took a short time to power up – a mechanic that was supposed to discourage starting fights then retreating to your ship.
“We can make the starport,” Kaiden said, focusing on the path ahead of them. It wasn’t more than a hundred paces out now. “But once we get inside, we need a plan. Need to distract Werner long enough to—”
Targeted by ranged attack.
This guy’s relentless!
Kaiden turned hard to the right, trying to throw off Werner’s aim, then vaulted over a bench. A good attempt, maybe, but it wasn’t enough. A Warden’s Bolt exploded through the bench, spraying burning splinters and electric arcs in all directions. Several slammed into Kaiden’s back and dropped his health to twenty-two percent.
Kaiden shook off the damage and tried to focus on running. From the alleys, buildings, and side streets all around, NPCs were starting to gather. Noticing the fight, it seemed. They didn’t look concerned, though. Instead, they looked... excited. They were gathering in a crowd along the sides of the street and a few of them were already jeering and cheering at the battle.
Okay, yeah. I’m sure it’s real entertaining for you to watch us run for our lives.
“We need a way to delay Werner long enough to get the shuttle online. How’s your charge looking? What are we working with?”
“Thirty percent,” Titus shouted back. “Not much, but I can get off at least one ability.”
Ally targeted by ranged attack.
“He’s targeting you again!”
Titus growled, then spun just in time to catch the attack on his shield and activate an ability of his own.
Ability: Reflection
Reflects 20% of damage absorbed by the warden’s shield back against the attacker for 10 seconds.
Cost: 20 charge.
Cooldown: 2 minutes.
Good thinking. Kaiden glanced over his shoulder to watch as the Improved Burst Arrow that’d been targeting Titus exploded against his shield. Twenty percent of its damage reflected back at Werner. It rebounded as half-formed, smaller, and seemingly unstable versions of the original Burst Arrow. Didn’t look too impressive, really, but twenty percent of the damage from a level fifty-three player’s attack was nothing to scoff at.
Werner might as well have scoffed at it, though. He didn’t even try to dodge it; just put his head down and pushed right through the blast. His health bar dropped to eighty-two percent, but he was closer to them now.
“Titus, keep moving! We have to reach the starport!” Kaiden shouted, but the big man had already returned to his sprint. The crowd parted as he moved through it with impressive speed. No doubt none of them were looking to get in the way of that much directed momentum.
There was another ding in Kaiden’s ear.
Targeted by ranged attack.
Werner really needs to learn the concept of focusing his fire. Switching between Titus and me is hardly the most effective strategy. Which is a good thing for us, actually.
Improved Enhanced Senses ran out and shut off, but Kaiden’s visor flashed text across his vision and he was just able read it before an attack slammed into him.
Ability: Improved Paralyzing Shot
Oh. Oh no.
His health bar dropped down to eleven percent, but the wasn’t the worst of it. Energy crackled all over his body. His sprint slowed to a jog, then a stumbling walk. He was tilted forward, urging himself to move, but every movement felt slow, like he was drunk, or worse, catching some lag. But he wasn’t. The ‘paralyzing’ part of Improved Paralyzing Shot was kicking in, reducing his speed by... some amount. He’d only seen Zelda’s Paralyzing Shot – the unimproved version – but even that slowed targets by fifty percent for ten seconds.
Running from this fight just got a whole lot more difficult.
And with his health so low, one more attack was likely to finish him off.
Okay, okay. So I just can’t get hit. That’s priority number one. Kaiden used the charge he had remaining to keep himself alive.
Ability: Improved Blur
His charge began to deplete – five units for every second the ability was active – and his body began to vibrate and fall out of focus. In moments, he was vibrating side to side, jittering, almost. And then a body double stepped out from him. And another. Two in total, and both of them vibrating and shaking and jerking around just the same as he was. Three targets, each as hard to hit as the next, and only one of them real.
Several ‘Oohs’ and ‘Ahhs’ trickled out from the crowd at the sight.
If he can’t hit me, he can’t kill me.
Ability: Lock On
Werner10 has locked on to you.
Uh-oh. Zelda had the ability, he knew, but he couldn’t recall its full description. He tried to use his visor to pull up specifics on the ability, but as usual, it would only give a vague description of enemy abilities.
Locks on to a target so attacks will not miss. Deactivates if target is out of sight or when damage is taken.
Okay. This is officially a problem. A very big problem.
“Keep going, Titus. Get to the Borrelly and get out of here!”
“What?” the big man shouted back, but Kaiden wasn’t listening. An idea had just occurred to him.
Lock On can’t hit me if Werner can’t see me, right?
It was worth a shot. Kaiden looked to both sides and quickly dismissed that as an option. He was a good three or four paces from any sort of cover, and with the paralysis still slowing him, he’d have no chance.
“Tough luck, kid,” Werner10 said, then began charging what was sure to be a lethal shot. Looked like an Improved Kinetic Grenade.
Except... Kaiden felt his eyes go wide. Damage! Lock On ‘deactivates if target is out of sight or when damage is taken.’
Kaiden canceled his Improved Blur and stopped vibrating. His body doubles disappeared, leaving him exposed, but his charge bar also stopped draining.
Twenty-three charge left. Just enough.
Ability: Hammer Toss
Kaiden lunged forward and threw his hammer with everything in him. Not that it helped any – the game determined how hard his throw was based on his stats – but still, he willed it forward.
The hammer flew through the air and caught Werner10 before he’d finished charging his attack. It did negligible damage, but achieved the intended effect.
Werner10’s lock has been broken.
“Ha! Yes!” Kaiden pumped a fist in celebration. A few of the crowd cheered with him. Then Kaiden realized something.
Ah. Crap.
Werner10 wasn’t locked on anymore, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t shoot. And he’d had to turn off Improved Blur to have enough charge for Hammer Toss. He’d been so focused on breaking Lock On that he’d forgotten the rest of the fight was still happening.
Werner smiled, raised his hammer-gun, and fired.
Kaiden closed his eyes and sighed.
The Improved Kinetic Grenade exploded with a deafening boom and Kaiden waited for the message telling him he’d been defeated.
But it didn’t come.
“C’mon, Kai. You didn’t think I’d leave you here?”
Kaiden opened his eyes to find Titus in front of him, his shield raised and flickering.
“No! You should have kept going. At least one of us would have survived.”
Werner10 fired a follow-up Improved Burst Arrow. The attack overloaded Titus’ shield. The thin, transparent barrier of energy that’d been protecting them flickered once more, then disappeared.
“Nowhere to run, and nowhere to hide,” Werner10 said.
He’s level fifty-three. Even if we closed the gap on him, our attacks just flat
out aren’t strong enough to bring him down. We can’t make up for a level gap this big.
Werner advanced, his hammer-gun lowered.
Preparing to Shackle us, no doubt.
Werner smiled as he approached. “I’d say you put up a good fight, but being honest, you didn’t. Not that it matters. All this will be irrelevant once Killswitch comes online and—”
Something big and gray came hurtling down from above. The crowd screamed and parted as engines roared and the vehicle spun around and slammed into Werner with a loud thud. He was launched backward, tossed down the street. His health bar went wild as he landed, took fall damage, and rolled into the side of a building. His HP had taken a massive hit, but he wasn’t dead.
It was only then Kaiden could make sense of what happened. He looked up to the thing that had hit Werner. It was a shuttle. But not just any shuttle. The Borrelly.
“Hold on boys, we’re doing a fast extraction here,” a familiar voice said, broadcasting through proximity chat.
“Is that... Ellenton?” Titus asked.
It is!
“Where did you come from—oh god, what are you doing?”
The shuttle was faced away from them, its rear loading ramp down, but the whole thing was backing up at speed – right toward them, the lip of the ramp scraping along the ground and shooting sparks everywhere.
“Fast extraction,” Ellenton said. “I already told you.”
Kaiden tried to dive out of the way but then the ramp was beneath his feet. Nova’s physics freaked out for a moment, jerking this way and that as he and Titus were swept off the surface of the street and slid tumbling into the Borrelly’s internal gravity grid.
“Ha! Perfect shot!” Ellenton called from the cockpit. “Now hold on. We’re getting out of here.” The ramp rose behind them, whirring mechanically as it closed and sealed them inside the shuttle.
“I’m thoroughly confused,” Kaiden said as they rocketed upward, the shuttle groaning from the strain of the engines pushing at full force.
“Last place I logged off was in here,” Ellenton said. “The game saved my spawn point. So when Thorne sent me a message in the real world about ten minutes ago saying y’all were in trouble, well, I guess you got lucky you brought me with you. Intentionally or not.” She gestured to the open space of the shuttle’s main compartment. “Dawson’s here too, or he will be once he logs back in. He wanted to help too, but he wasn’t near his pod when Thorne called.”
Kaiden staggered toward the cockpit, then finally walked in a straight line and at a reasonable speed as the effects of Improved Paralyzing Shot wore off.
“Thank you,” he said, mind still reeling from everything that had just happened.
“I didn’t even know you could scoop someone up like that,” Titus said, still staring back at the now-closed ramp. “Is the game even meant to handle that?”
“Uhhh... not really,” Ellenton said. “But it works most of the time. I’ve only killed a couple players doing it.”
“We’re not out of this yet,” Kaiden said, then pointed out of the cockpit window. Two shuttles were approaching. Warden shuttles, from the looks of them.
“Now who’s that?” Ellenton asked, leaning forward and squinting.
“Werner’s friends,” Kaiden said, remembering the power wardens who had disappeared during the chase on foot. “They must have gone to get their ships to head us off.”
“Let’s take ‘em out!” Titus growled, then paused, a look of confusion spreading across his face. “Oh, right. I keep forgetting this thing isn’t the Veritas II. It doesn’t have turrets.”
“The Veritas II?” Ellenton asked, looking excited at the mention of their light cruiser.
“We’ll explain later,” Kaiden said. “Let’s deal with those shuttles first!”
“Oh, them? They’re no problem. They’re wardens,” she said. “They won’t fire ship-sized weapons in an urban area like this.”
Shield Integrity: 96%
Shield Integrity: 90%
Shield Integrity: 85%
The whole of the Borrelly rocked and jumped as a hail of laser fire slammed into them. Many of the shots missed, though, and exploded against the surrounding buildings and streets. The NPCs down below who’d been watching for sport earlier ran for cover now, and Kaiden swore he saw a few of them go up in puffs of flame.
“These guys are a different sort of warden,” Titus said.
“Yeah,” Ellenton said with a growl. “An insult to the name, mostly. Getting real tired of Moran and his personal goons.” She slammed the throttle forward as she said the last part and Kaiden found himself clutching at the walls of the cockpit.
The Borrelly’s engines groaned and the hull shook, but Ellenton knew what she was doing. The pilot they had on the Veritas II, Sias, was a good NPC pilot. Ellenton, however, was no NPC.
The other two shuttles continued firing, streams of lasers pouring out, but Ellenton dodged and strafed, always staying ahead of their fire. Kaiden found himself transfixed. He’d forgotten what it was like to fly with her. Terrifying, for starters. But also exhilarating. A masterpiece to behold.
“Wardens are supposed to avoid collateral damage, you morons,” Ellenton said as she hit the afterburners and the shuttle’s engines went into overdrive. The two attacking shuttles followed as they climbed out from among the buildings of Boyd City.
They continued to climb through the clouds, rising into an orange-pink world as the sunset appeared over the distant horizon. If this was a retreat, though, it wasn’t working. The pursuing shuttles were fighting to keep up, but managing it.
Flame erupted against the windshield of the Borrelly as it broke through the atmosphere of the planet. The engines were increasingly released from the pull of gravity and now, with no wind resistance, the shuttle’s engines were given free rein.
Ellenton checked to make sure the pursuers were still behind, then smirked and flipped a switch on the dash.
Decoupled mode activated.
A shudder went through the Borrelly. Looking out of the window, Kaiden noticed the engines of the shuttle, which were usually locked in tandem, always moving the same direction at the same time, were no longer doing anything of the sort. Instead, they appeared to be moving independently, adjusting ever so slightly to keep the ship moving in the direction Ellenton desired.
Then, all at once, she pulled hard on the sticks and the Borrelly spun around to face the oncoming shuttles. Normally, spinning like that would have pointed the main engines backwards, causing the ship to do a ‘flip and burn’ and slow down. Whatever decoupled mode had done, they weren’t slowing down. Instead, they were facing backward toward their pursuers, but maintaining the same velocity as when they’d been facing forward.
“It’s a spaceship, but everyone tries to fly like they’re in a plane. There’s so much more possible if you’re willing to get creative,” Ellenton said, opening up with the Borrelly’s guns and targeting the right-most shuttle first. Its shields flashed to life beneath the attack, and whereas the shots the shuttles had fired earlier were mostly off target, Ellenton’s were all on the mark.
Both opposing shuttles returned fire, but only for a moment. The right-most shuttle’s shields went down, then its cockpit was ruptured a moment later as the Borrelly’s fire tore into it. The shuttle slowed, the pilot most certainly dead, and was out of the chase in moments.
“One down,” Ellenton said, face firm with concentration. “One to go.”
Shield Integrity: 81%
Shield Integrity: 75%
The other shuttle was still firing, but it seemed Ellenton had a plan for that too.
Decoupled mode deactivated.
Kaiden was thrown full off his feet as the engines snapped around back to their usual position and the afterburners kicked in. The Borrelly groaned like it was going to tear itself apart under the strain of stopping so suddenly. The pursuing shuttle wasn’t able to adjust quick enough and ended up shooting past them.
The shuttle didn’t hang around to find out how that would end. Instead, its afterburners flared to life as it rocketed away as fast as possible.
“Good decision,” Ellenton said, raising her fingers from the weapons’ trigger and smirking.
“Hell yeah!” Titus shouted, pumping a fist in the air, and Kaiden couldn’t blame him. Found himself cheering right along.
After the groans and blasts and roaring engines of the ship-to-ship fight, suddenly everything seemed too quiet. Kaiden’s pulse was still pounding in his ears, but the fight was done.
Ellenton watched the retreating opponent to make sure they weren’t going to circle back around, then laughed.
“Come back when you know what you’re doing.”
Chapter Thirty
Returning to the Veritas II had never felt so good. Aside from its thick hull, protective shielding, and guns big enough to deter most attackers, it also had a medbay. A medbay that Kaiden and Titus were putting to very good use after the beating they’d received in Boyd City.
“Note to self: buy stimpacks. We’ve been so busy we haven’t picked any up since I don’t know when. Could have cost us back there,” Titus said, raising a hand and staring at it as white light flooded around him.
The medbay had come equipped with two healing stations, which were a sort of bed that could fold up automatically to become chairs. Wrapped around each bed – and their occupants – was a series of smooth, metal rings, the underside of which was equipped with an array of sensors and lights and who knew what else. Kaiden certainly didn’t. Whatever the tech was, it did its job.