“So there will be a sequel?” Boothe asked.
Victor nodded. “I really hope so anyways. I have plenty of ideas for sequels, but it all depends on how much support the game gets in the next couple of months, when it goes into wide release.”
Victor pulled the van up to the tunnel entrance where Orange Horizon’s Falcon was still parked.
“We’re here,” Victor said. “Good luck guys.”
Everybody got out of the van, but before Boothe shut the door, he turned back to Victor and asked, “What happens if we fail?”
“I really don’t know the answer to that. The world will continue on. I created the AI, but it’s all very complex. I don’t know exactly how Orion will respond to this attack. Likely by counter-attacking, and the Eagles are so worn down, that he would probably destroy them. So, don’t fail.”
“Got it,” Boothe said. “Thanks.”
“Good luck you guys,” Victor said. “I’m rooting for you. I’m ready to see how this ends as much as you are.”
With that, Boothe led Atomic Massacre down a narrow set of stairs and into a dark tunnel. He turned on his night-vision goggles. The rest of the group had their own night-vision now as well, so Braddock’s flashlight was not necessary. That was good - no need to bring any attention to themselves with a bright beam of light, this was going to be difficult enough as it was.
At the bottom of the stairs was a hallway, stretching back towards the dome. Advertisements lined the walls - leftovers from a past that had been destroyed. Tiles along the floor were cracked and falling apart. Cobwebs covered every surface and hung from the ceiling like ragged curtains.
Boothe saw a set of prints forming a trail in the dust on the floor - prints that Orange Horizon had left when they passed through here only an hour ago. Before they were brutally murdered.
They walked down the hall for some time, not speaking, moving as silently as they possibly could.
Group Stealth (70%) - FAILED!
They were quiet, but it didn’t matter. Orion’s men were waiting for them, and when they were half a mile down the tunnel, a spotlight on the ceiling switched on and shined down on top of them, turning Boothe’s nightvision pure white. Gunshots rang out, echoing in the enclosed space. Blinded, Boothe dove for cover, hiding behind a wooden bench. The others took cover behind metal trashcans and the pillars that supported the ceiling. Bullets tore through the cement and plaster walls, filling the air with dust and smoke.
The gunshots came from further down the tunnel, but Boothe couldn’t see anything with the spotlight shining into his face. He aimed his rifle up at the source of the light and shot, blasting the bulb to pieces that tinkled down onto the floor.
“Can anybody see them?” Boothe asked, his vision slowly coming back.
The rest of the group replied in the negative.
“We have to move forward a little at a time,” Boothe said, taking charge of the situation. “Two teams - Lucas and Mariko on one. Me, Scarlett and Braddock on the other. We alternate between providing cover fire and moving forward. Got it?”
It was a quick explanation, but they all understood what he was trying to say and agreed to the plan.
Lucas and Mariko peeked out for a second and fired in the direction of the gunfire, giving Boothe, Scarlett, and Braddock enough time to rush forward a few yards before they took cover once again. Bullets flew past so close that Boothe could feel them. His energy shield would protect him from one or two, but there were so many.
Once they were behind cover again, unharmed, Boothe flipped the switch on his carbine to full-auto and fired a barrage in the direction of the gunmen. He could see the occasional muzzle flash in the distance and tried to aim for those. The goal here was not necessarily to hit anything, but to force the enemies to stop firing long enough for Lucas and Mariko to move forward. When they were in position, they repeated the pattern.
This time though, when Boothe stepped out and ran forward, a bullet slammed into his energy shield, knocking him backwards and causing him to stumble.
Boothe takes 3 DAMAGE!
Energy Shield - 2/5.
The enemies weren’t hiding anymore, and instead seemed to be focused solely on killing them. They were willing to die to stop them from entering the city. They were willing to sacrifice themselves for their King, Orion. More bullets flew past. From somewhere nearby came the pinging sound of metal against metal and the crackle of electricity. Boothe dove to hide behind an overturned bench.
Enemies detected: 5
Marty’s camera now showed the night-vision green blobs of bandits hiding another fifty yards ahead, but Boothe had no time to focus on them, because Mariko was screaming.
He turned and saw Braddock fall to the ground, half his metal skull ripped off - wires sparking and crackling electricity.
“I’m sorry guys,” he said, his mechanical voice slowing down to a whine. “Good… luck…”
Then the red light in the center of his remaining eye dwindled away to a pinpoint and disappeared.
Interlude 13
Couch Co-op
“Shit, shit, shit!” Scarlett said, clicking her mouse like crazy.
Mariko grabbed Braddock and pulled him behind cover. She tried to revive him, but it was too late.
“Marty sees them,” I said. “But I can’t get a shot.”
“Hold on,” Scarlett said. She leaned over towards me, looking at my screen. She put her hand on mine and moved the mouse so that my screen showed where the enemies were. Then she returned to her computer, aimed her shotgun at the area where she now knew the bandits were hiding, and fired.
“Got one!” she cheered.
“Nice work!” Foster said.
“It’s kind of like cheating, isn’t it?” I said.
“No Bran,” she said. “It’s called teamwork. Now show me where the others are.”
She fired again, taking a bandit’s head off, then Mariko joined her, angrily firing shot after shot, until all the enemies were dead.
I moved Boothe over to Braddock’s body and clicked to open the robot’s chest compartment. It felt weird, like searching through a woman’s purse. He had medkits, grenades, and other supplies inside, but eventually I found what I was looking for - the armor-piercing rounds that he had saved to use against Orion. We would need as many of these as we could get. They were for a revolver, which I didn’t use, so I passed them to Lucas.
“Mariko, did you know Braddock in real life?” Scarlett asked.
Mariko knelt next to the robot and pulled the helmet from her head. Her dark hair flowed over her shoulders. Like she had with Locke and Caustic before him, she placed her fingers to her lips and then touched the code marked on Braddock’s arm. Then she covered his head with her helmet and left it behind.
“No, I didn’t know him,” she said, standing up. “But I have his e-mail.”
“That’s good,” Scarlett said. “So we can get back together when we finish this.”
“Let’s worry about that second part first,” Lucas said. “There are still like twenty dudes between us and the dome controls.”
But twenty dudes didn’t seem like much at all, the way we were mowing through them now. We moved in pairs - me with Lucas and Scarlett with Mariko. With Scarlett and I on different teams, we could look at each other’s screens to coordinate our attacks. Our timing was perfect, moving between the enemy’s gunfire, and firing our own shots when we were able.
Now that we were out of the spotlight, and getting further down the tunnel, we could easily see the bandits. We didn’t have to fire blindly anymore, instead aiming and taking down an enemy with nearly every shot.
Then I spotted the exit of the tunnel - a set of stairs leading up to a doorway lit up by the open sky outside. I glanced over at Marty’s video feed.
Enemy’s detected: 3
“Fifty yards ‘til the exit,” I said. “Three guys. We got this.”
I clicked MOVE and a grid pattern appeared over the battlefield,
highlighting the squares in my movement range. I chose a position behind cover, and Boothe ran over to it and ducked behind an overturned shopping cart. I chose my target, made sure I had burst-fire selected, and then clicked AIM. The text at the bottom of the screen showed a 45% chance per shot. I wasn’t going to get any better than that in the current situation, and with a three-round burst, I had a pretty good chance of hitting at least once. I clicked FIRE and the animations started, notifications popping up at the bottom of the screen.
M4A1 Carbine (45%) - MISS
M4A1 Carbine (45%) - HIT! (4 DAMAGE)
M4A1 Carbine (45%) - MISS
The one shot that hit slammed into the bandit’s shoulder, knocking him back a bit. Then Mariko finished him off with a rifle shot to the head. Lucas fired at one of the other bandits with his own rifle, scored a crit, and blasted the enemy’s face off.
“Nice!” Scarlett said. She vaulted over the bench she had been hiding behind, charged the remaining enemy, and slammed her axe through his skull.
“Tunnel is clear,” I said. “Now for the hard part.”
Scarlett led the way up the stairs and then had to immediately take cover to the right of the doorway as more bullets rained down on her location. I ducked behind the wall on the opposite side of the doorway from her, while Lucas and Mariko waited further down the stairs, out of the enemy’s sight.
I sent Marty out to scan the battlefield.
Enemies detected: 142
“Holy shit,” I said. “There’s so many. And those are only the ones that are visible - there’s probably a bunch more hiding inside the buildings.”
“Never tell me the odds kid,” Scarlett said.
“Remember,” Lucas said. “We don’t need to kill them all. We just need to turn the dome off.”
“Right,” I said.
I had Marty spin and show me where the dome controls were. There were a lot of enemies, but many of them were over near the barrier, distracted by all the Eagles there. At our location, there were about ten, and a turret on top of one of the buildings, blasting away at the doorway where we hid.
Suddenly, I had an idea.
“Oh man, I hope this works,” I said. “I’ve been looking forward to doing this ever since I chose this class.”
“What?” Scarlett asked. She slid over on the couch a bit closer to me and looked at my screen.
I clicked the turret then clicked the HACK button to have Marty fly over towards it and connect.
Hacking (80%) - SUCCESS!
A small window popped up with three choices.
DISABLE, OVERHEAT PROCESSORS, or REWIRE.
I had chosen to take the Rewire power after hitting Level 14 during a small quest the day before. This was the first time I’d had a chance to use it though. Barely able to control myself, I clicked REWIRE. Immediately, the turret shifted, aiming its barrel down at the bandits who stood between us and the building with the dome controls inside.
The first bullet hit a bandit hiding behind a wrecked car in front of the tunnel exit. The .50 caliber round practically destroyed his entire head, exploding it in a cloud of blood and brains.
Chaos spread as the bandits realized what had happened. They scrambled to find other cover that would protect them from both us and the turret. The constant stream of bullets raining down from the turret chased them as they fled, and Boothe added to the massacre with a three-round burst that hit one of bandits directly in the chest and dropped him to the ground immediately.
I looked over at Scarlett. “Do you think you can make it to those controls?”
“Oh yeah,” she said. She leaned over her keyboard aggressively and her character ran out of the doorway.
Boothe ran with her, then hid behind the car in the middle of the street. Lucas and Mariko moved up the stairs and took cover where Scarlett and Boothe had been.
Scarlett continued sprinting across the street in a blur of motion, heading straight towards the small building on the other side that held the dome controls. An enemy crossed in front of her, fleeing from the turret, and she shoved him to the ground where Mariko promptly put a bullet in his face.
Then Scarlett was through the door. I tried to focus on my screen, continuing to shoot the enemies, while also frequently looking over at hers. She spun around a corner and blasted a bandit with her shotgun, then stood in front of the dome controls.
“Bran, I don’t know what to do with this,” she said.
I had been expecting a switch or a lever that would turn the dome off, but instead there was a computer that covered the entire wall.
“I’m sending Marty,” I said, and clicked the buttons to have the drone fly to her location. I kept Boothe’s gun aimed at the doorway, making sure that no other bandits tried to get in and stop her from lowering the dome. Mariko and Lucas blasted away at other enemies from the doorway behind me. The turret that I had gained control of lowered its barrel and disabled itself. Five rounds had passed and its damage was done.
When Marty reached Scarlett, I had him connect to the computer.
Hacking (100%) - SUCCESS!
In the sky above, the translucent barrier of the dome dimmed, and then disappeared entirely. Immediately the place was filled with the noise of yelling, engines revving, and gunfire.
LEVEL UP!
Boothe reaches Level 15!
Ability point gained. Skill point gained.
Assign available points.
“Yes!” Scarlett cheered. She held up her hand for me to give her a high five, and I slapped my palm against hers. Then she gave Foster, who had been watching from the edge of his seat, a high five also.
“Good job everybody,” I said. “Now, we have to get to that tower.”
“Either of you want a drink?” Foster asked, getting up to walk over to the minifridge.
“Sure, I’ll take a Mt. Dew,” I said. When I turned, I caught sight of Scarlett, who was looking at me and smiling.
“Hey Bran,” she said.
“Yeah?”
“Maybe you and I should go out sometime? Like on a date.”
Foster looked over at us and grinned, raising his eyebrows.
“That sounds fun,” I said.
She moved a little closer to me on the couch and said, “I think so.”
She looked at me and leaned in. I sat confused, awkward, unsure of what to do.
Then Mariko’s voice came through the headset. “Just kiss her, dumbass!”
So I moved the microphone out of the way of my mouth, leaned in, and pressed my lips against Scarlett’s. It wasn’t much of a kiss, and it wasn’t my first, but it our first, so it was the best.
“Okay,” Lucas said. “Now that we got that shit out of the way, let’s go kill Orion.”
Level 15
Orion
1
The noise from the battle was deafening. Gunfire and explosions, screams and cheers - all happening at once as the entire player-base stormed into the city.
Boothe quickly allocated the points received from leveling up to Aim and Hacking. Both seemed like they could be helpful in this final battle. If Orion was a machine, he might be able to hack him, otherwise if it were a person under all that armor, increasing his chance of shooting the guy seemed like a good idea.
“We need to get to the elevator,” Scarlett said.
Boothe waved for Lucas and Mariko to follow him, and then met up with Scarlett at the entrance to the small building where she and Marty had just disabled the dome.
“Hopefully most of the enemies are over where the other Eagles are,” Boothe said, “and we’ll have a somewhat clear path to the tower.”
They moved cautiously around the building and saw the road leading up to the Reunion Tower. Like a red carpet rolled out in front of a king’s throne, the street stretched three-hundred yards in front of them. Along the sides were rows of similarly shaped brick office buildings that had somehow survived the city’s destruction. Turrets were positioned strategically along the rooftops so
that every inch of the road was within range of at least one of them. More bandits crouched behind barriers on the sides near the buildings - defensive bunkers built specifically for protecting the tower.
“This is a deathtrap,” Lucas said.
“Maybe we can find some other way around,” Boothe suggested. He sent Marty to look, but all the other roads had been blocked off with huge steel walls, and he could not see another entrance to the tower, except the one right in front of them. The game was funneling them into this narrow area and Boothe hated it.
Mariko suddenly slipped an arm around Boothe’s waist and pointed up towards the top of the nearest building.
“Grapple,” she said.
“Oh, yeah,” Boothe agreed. “I could take one at a time and we travel across the rooftop. It would block attacks from some of the enemies anyways, though the turrets would have a straight shot at us.”
“Okay,” Mariko said, then pointed again. “Grapple.”
Boothe shot the grappling hook towards the roof of the nearest building and they soared through the air. Bandits hiding along the street took shots at them as they rose, but they moved too fast to hit. Then they flew over the waist-high wall at the top of the building and landed on the roof. Immediately they took cover, ducking behind the wall as the turret on the building across the street locked onto their location and more high-caliber rounds pounded into the brick.
“You guys okay up there?” Scarlett asked.
“Yep,” Boothe replied. “Give me just a minute.”
He sent Marty flying across the street to the turret and connected to it.
Hacking (85%) - FAILED!
Intrusion attempt detected.
All Inputs LOCKED.
“Damn,” Boothe cursed under his breath.
Mariko put a reassuring hand on his shoulder, then took a frag grenade off her belt, pulled the pin, and tossed it like a Major League Baseball outfielder all the way onto the roof across the street. Boothe pulled Marty away, his video feed showing that the grenade had landed only inches away from the turret.
Apocalypse 2020: A Wasteland LitRPG Page 35
