Star Divers
Dungeons of Bane
By Stephen Landry
Copyright © Stephen Landry 2019
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior written permission from the publisher.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any person or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. No affiliation is implied or intended to any organisation or recognisable body mentioned within.
Published by Level Up in the United Kingdom in 2019
Cover by Claire Wood
ISBN: 978-1-912701-85-8
www.levelup.pub
For Tori
Access
Name: Breq
Age: 17
Level: 30
Status: Alive
Mana: 100
Class: Scout
Health: 100
Stamina: 100
Load out: M7-7 kinetic Rifle, Sabre (melee), Short grip energy pistol, smoke grenades
Checking for necessary update files...
Initializing...
Player environment meets necessary requirements.
Retina scan / Identity confirmed.
Dive 100%
Loading player data...
Year 2074
1.
A Boy in a Star
Location: Alpha Centauri A
Environment: Inhospitable
Resources: None
Quick Lore
Alpha Centauri A, Alpha Centauri B and Proxima Centauri make up the Alpha Centauri Star system.
— Quest —
Orbital Decay
Expected Difficulty: Expert
Rewards: Artefact
It was more than a few hours since I had dropped in and I felt like I was getting close to finding the artefact.
If you ask me how I come to be standing inside the decaying shell of an old-world starship, plummeting into a star with my arm bleeding and poison running through my veins, it might be a little hard for me to explain. We could start with why I was risking my life, or I could jump straight to why I was outside my armour and armed with only my rifle and a knife, or maybe it would be easier to talk about how I got this gash on my hand. Truth is, I’m not really sure about the gash or the bleeding arm and I think the poison is my own fault for not having come properly prepared. Not that I care to admit that. Maybe it’s the absence of nausea or the lack of headaches and muscle strain but when I’m playing Bane I can feel the game guiding me. Like a sixth sense that awakens when I dive. Something about this world makes me feel more alive than the one I come from. Alive enough to push past the pain.
I’ve been a Corpse Diver for almost two years, since right before I turned sixteen, just old enough to play. Since being emancipated this has been my full-time job. My career. Becoming a Corpse Diver is kind of like joining the army, only the risk of perma-death is a lot lower. Not that it didn’t happen…sometimes things in the game have repercussions in the real world. Both mind and body.
I was rescued by the game. Picked from the streets of South Boston in the New England Recovery zone where I joined the corporation my father worked for before both he and my mother had passed away. After their death the corporation had left me on my own and left to my own devices I learned to survive for a year until I found my way back to them.
I wasn’t really bleeding inside a starship trapped in an orbital decay. No, my real body was back at Keen Industries Industrial complex strapped safe and sound inside a full dive pod. Probably being monitored by some tech in a lab coat doing a study on virtual immersion and said side effects.
This was my second solo mission. The first for which I had hijacked one of our shuttles and the first I’d seriously screwed up. Normally, missions I go on are fetch quests, low level hunts for artefacts and courier missions. For this one, I’d gone after an artefact on the edge of the ‘Cold Zone’.
Artefacts, or echoes, are remnants left behind by player character deaths. Guarded by Hollows, ghostlike figures that can kill a player with their touch, artefacts are rare to find and worth a great deal. The echoes left behind farther from the Spire can have rewards that are rare, while if a player dies close to the core worlds the echo rewards will be common. Not only do players pay us to chase their echoes but many companies both in-game and in the real pay out large sums for rare artefacts. The artefacts themselves could be anything. Most of the time they come as weapons, gems, or some kind of unique apparel.
Nel, my hovering robotic companion, had picked up this bounty several days ago and informed me first about it this morning. It was high risk, high reward. I’m sure if I had asked the others they would have said ‘no’. Of course, had I told them it would have meant a smaller cut for me. Artefacts can be traded for real world money but we were under contract from Keen Industries. In return for service they give us food, shelter and a small allowance. Death means restarting at Level 1, rebuilding your avatar, losing all your equipment, powers, upgrades etc. Being a Corpse Diver is a dangerous job, the kind that most players stay away from.
We were deep inside the shell of an old world seed ship called the Lockhead. Looked like it had been derelict for some time before making its way this close to Alpha Centauri A. They were on the wrong side of the system but that was all a part of Bane’s lore. Humanity had fled Earth sometime in the late twenty-first century after discovering what they called a ‘world gate’ near the edge of our solar system. They found themselves stranded. Because of a malfunction in the world gate, once they passed through they could never return back. Not to mention it was unknown whether the gate would bring them back to Earth at all. The colonists believed that while they had been trapped inside the gate the malfunction had caused them to diverge from Earth’s timeline by over thirty-thousand years.
Emerging from their time capsule, it wasn’t long before they discovered one habitable world and set up a basecamp, built over the top of alien ruins. They called it the Spire. Human and alien technology merged as new technologies developed, allowing us to extend our reach across the landscape and towards the stars. It was at the Spire humanity discovered an alien species called the Brosechels, aka Chels for short. That time of discovery soon led to an age of rebellion as colonists abandoned the Spire and sought shelter elsewhere. The discovery of a second world gate led to the discovery of a third and fourth and so on until 76 quadrants had been identified. The game itself picks up three hundred years later. Humanity, aided by the Chels in an effort for both species to survive, are mapping out all 76 quadrants or levels and christened a newly discovered number 77 the ‘Cold Zone’.
Many things about Bane made the world feel post-apocalyptic. For one, all our worlds were in ruins. There were guardians to keep the peace but most of the zones were filled with pirates (also called raiders or marauders) and smugglers. Backwater worlds traded with the Spire which acted as the Hub of the entire game.
Alpha Centauri was as far away from the Spire as I could go without being stranded and I had to use a hack to get my dropship as far as I had. It was somewhere just between the fifth and sixth quadrant. I was good at the game but I wasn’t the best. So far Bane had a player count around four million but sometimes it felt like everyone on the planet was playing.
I wasn’t here to play games. This quest was off the record and I wouldn’t have a team coming to back me up anytime soon. I was getting tired of basic fetch quests and fighting low level monsters. I nee
ded to start making a name for myself if I was going to continue levelling up.
‘Are you really going to quit?’ asked Nel. Nel was neither a man nor woman but would take on the persona of a female more often than not. At the moment she sounded like she was in shock at the idea.
‘Where did you hear that?’
‘Cass was telling me about it.’
‘I thought you weren’t supposed to spill secrets?’
‘I was never asked to keep it secret,’ Nel responded.
‘I’ve thought about it, I don’t want to live as an indentured servant forever, there is more out there, more to this world and the real world that I want,’ I replied focusing ahead.
‘Are you planning to apply for a position with another cruiser?’
‘No, I want my own,’ I replied and felt happy at the thought.
‘With the amount of allowance you gain from bounties that would take you three hundred and forty-seven years of saving…and that does not account for any inflation or…’
‘Enough, I know,’ I said, cutting Nel off before she went on about how having my own starship and crew and running my own guild was next to impossible. ‘A kid can dream.’
‘Dreams are useless; if you plan on selling the artefact from this bounty yourself you will have to acquire approximately forty-seven more similar jobs should this artefact itself be estimated at a value of two million credits,’ Nel said.
‘Thanks, so you’ll come give me a hand on those right?’
‘I am programmed to serve you so long as you are a Corpse Diver.’ Nel hesitated, ‘the fact that they let you join before you even reached level ten is a miracle and I find that I wish you to survive and succeed.’
For an artificial intelligence the response was solid enough. I knew Nel didn’t want me to leave…telling me the odds was her way of convincing me to give up frantic quests like this. The two of us had been together since the beginning. Everyone else would have said owning my starship was just a pipe dream as well…well, maybe not my best friend Damien. Luckily for me it wouldn’t take forty-seven more quests. Unknown to Nel, the black market was alive and well inside the Spire and artefacts could be sold for double sometimes triple the amount they would via corporations and merchant guilds.
‘This is going to be great: drop in, grab the artefact and get out before the starship crashes into the sun,’ I said. No one was listening except Nel who also, might I add, had the personality matrix of a child. Meaning she was either playful or dead serious all of the time. Sometimes both.
‘I told you the odds of your being successful were three hundred thousand to one,’ Nel was following close behind me.
If I managed to grab the artefact and escape, Nel would most likely have to carry whatever it was I found. This thought amused me and holding my side, I pushed on. I was dragging myself along the hallway…It was easy to forget I was losing health. My bleeding resistance was low. We were running out of time. I was running out of time. Nel had a tracker built in that allowed her to sense the location of the echo. My guess, it was similar to the same sense, acting as a radar, that allowed her to track teammates and call for aid no matter how far out we were. Some called it the ansible and it was the only way inside the game to send and receive messages instantaneously from light years away.
‘They are going to kill you if we aren’t back in a few hours,’ Nel said.
‘I know, that’s why we’re not going back empty handed.’
‘What’s the excuse this time? Another joyride across the rings of Minerva?’
‘Something like that, that’s pretty good, do you still have any images left over from our last side quest in that region?’ I wanted to laugh but my ribs were killing me. So far, I hadn’t run into any creatures or Hollows and that wasn’t a good sign. ‘It’s not possible the echo is gone?’
‘No, echoes take days, sometimes weeks to dissipate,’ Nel confirmed. I knew that but the farther down the rabbit hole we crawled the harder it would be for us to reach our shuttle on the side of the hull. My health had already dropped to about 8. I had maybe two stims I could use that would give me a boost of 10 HP each, but those would have to wait.
‘We can turn back now if you are too tired,’ said Nel.
‘Just think of all the EXP and credits we’ll lose.’
Nel cut me off. ‘That YOU will lose, I am an artificial construct, I gain no pleasure from E X P or credits.’
In my head, I was thinking of something to say in response. I had already joked about oil changes, getting Nel’s gunmetal grey body polished, tune-ups and adding some chrome, but usually my smart remarks fell on deaf ears. Everything Nel needed was paid for and supplied by the corporation and subtracted from what we - the Corpse Divers - made.
‘This is still better than trying to beat the main story quest,’ I said. The main storyline was hidden. Bane was an open world MMORPG with survival elements. There were side quests, quests made by players, etc., but the main quest…the one that progressed the world as a whole, was still being put together piece by piece. Every so often, some lucky player managed to stumble across a scripted event that progressed the world in some small way, but for the most part we were all playing the game as a second life.
‘Will this be your second or third strike?’ Nel asked.
‘Not sure, I think I’ve had more than three already,’ I said. Three strikes and the company let you go, but with so few players willing to put their characters on the line divers were becoming harder and harder to replace. I also had friends that had covered for me more than once. Damien one of them. The higher your level the more valuable you were.
Location Discovered: Hall of Immortals
Environment: Hospitable
Resources: Artefact
I walked inside the ‘Hall of Immortals’. Now this was different. Ships are separated out into distinct parts but the actual layers aren’t given specific location names. I smiled and moved myself away from the wall. The room that stood before us was a great hall with a tall ceiling. The walls themselves were grey and covered in metal plating like most of the ship but several runes were carved all around in intricate designs across the top and bottom. The runes seemed to almost point in the direction of what looked like a fallen paladin, a high-level soldier wearing an astronaut suit. At the time of his arrival the ship’s environment must have been haywire. From where I had been standing I could see dried blood across the ground. There had been another body dragged away.
‘Nel!’ I shouted, ‘stand back we aren’t alone down here,’ I snapped up right holding my rifle forward. The problem with tracking echoes was that you never knew exactly how the person died. Sure, some might say something about the cause of death in the bounty or while they are giving you a description of the quest, but for the most part it is a mystery until you are right there in person. I glanced at my heads-up display. Nothing had changed.
My health was displayed on a small red bar across the bottom of my vision, just above a blue line for my stamina and a green bar for powers (which were currently greyed out since I hadn’t been blessed with anything useful quite yet). The user interface was minimal. Just enough information we didn’t have to do a circular motion or gesture with our hands all the time to check our stats. The hand gesturing was mostly for building skills or casting simple abilities such as hacking. The minimal interface also made for a better more immersive experience.
‘Do you want me to contact the others?’ Nel asked.
‘No, not yet, I don’t want to drag anyone else into this.’
‘What about Damien?’ Nel asked again.
Damien had been my best friend since I made peace with my parents passing. I was starving on the streets when he walked past me holding a bottle of water. I attacked him for it and after he nearly knocked me out he shared some with me. Damien helped me find shelter for the night and the night after. Meeting together he even convinced me to sign up for Bane. Damien was almost two years older than I was and had his own
hover bike; loving parents; a home and a job (he worked as a Corpse Diver and went to school and hoped to study engineering). When he saw what my situation was he talked to some of the people at his work and they came and offered me the chance to work for them. That was how I made my return back to the company. It was a separate division from that in which my father worked but it still felt like I had returned in some way. Damien took me under his wing and introduced me to the rest of what became my team: Aiden, Brand, Shiru, Pierce, Eli, and Cass.
‘No, do not contact Damien,’ I said, ‘I’ll handle this.’
We were traversing the lowest part of the ship. It would take anyone several hours to reach us regardless, unless they could teleport to my exact location.
A spider-like creature emerged into the Hall of Immortals but ignored me, I was hidden in its blind spot. My heads-up display gave me a variety of information about it.
I was ready to fire on the creature before giving it a second thought. Aiming down my sight. Unlike most players, who utilized the game’s auto-aim feature, I relied on my own skills. Damien had taught me that. Showed me how to be capable on my own. He told me those were the skills that would make me a valuable player.
Arachnid
Level: 35
Hostile
It was five levels stronger than me. I should have expected that going in. A creature’s health was never displayed unless for some unusual circumstance. It was well known that most creatures level 1 -10 had a health in the hundred range (like that of players) while creatures 11-20 had up to a thousand health or so. Creatures above 20 were in the several thousands range. One creature I had faced during an event almost a year prior had a health close to fifty thousand. It took dozens of players to take the thing down. I knew this quest was expert level and I hadn’t done anything solo like this in a while. Not that I did much solo at all. A part of being in a guild meant I almost always worked together with a team.
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