Pangea Online: The Complete Trilogy

by S. L. Rowland

  Until now.

  The CS Lancaster has appeared just outside of empire territory, emitting a distress signal. All attempts to contact the crew have failed. An extraction team was sent to investigate and recover this valuable artifact. Upon entering the spaceship, the alpha team discovered that the ship had been overtaken by beings from foreign dimensions. Their attempts to make it to the control room failed.

  Your research vessel has been commandeered for the good of the empire. While reinforcements have been sent, it will take days for them to reach your location. We must not allow the CS Lancaster to fall into enemy hands! You must take the control room at all costs, clearing the ship of any foreign inhabitants that stand between you and your goal. The fate of the empire depends on it.

  Your team has docked at the lowest level up the ship. In panel A75, you will find an extraction kit hidden away for extreme circumstances. Equip the kit and fight your way to the control room, gathering weaponry and armor as you do so, and bring the CS Lancaster home.

  “Sounds like a classic tower climb to me.” I turn to Dean. “We fight our way through each level, getting better gear as we go along. If we reach the control room, we’re on to the next round.”

  Dean looks down the hallway. “Do you think the others are here? Or are we each playing our own version?”

  “I have no idea. In the Developer’s Tournament, we each had our own first stage, but then we were all together in the rest. This ship could be the size of a small city for all we know, so I guess we’re just going to have to find out.”

  “Then we better get moving.” He takes off down the hallway.

  The grates beneath our feet clink with each step, sending ominous echoes down the empty tunnel. The dim lighting and winding corridor does little to put me at ease.

  Each panel we pass is labeled with faded paint. A27. A49. A67. A75. Bingo.

  Dean opens the panel. A tray slides out topped with two black boxes. Two latches run along the sides of each box. We each take one and sit in on the floor in front of us.

  Out of curiosity, I open panel A74 to see if there are other hidden items, but it’s filled with breakers and wiring.

  “Let’s see what we’re working with.” I return to the box, flipping the latch and opening the lid.

  There’s a slight hiss as the interior of the box rises and then expands. On each side, there’s a silver helmet with a mirrored faceguard. In the center, two gleaming white chest plates reflect the dim light. Beneath them sits a badge with a barcode. I assume that’s how we’re making our way through this ship.

  Dean’s box is much smaller. Inside, there is a futuristic pistol, an item that looks like the hilt of a sword, and two small metallic orbs.

  He picks up the pistol and it whirs to life. A glowing streak of light runs down the side of the barrel. “Well? Are you gonna stare at it all day or are we going to try and win this thing?”

  The entire thing is sleek and polished. If I had to guess, it’s some kind of energy weapon.

  I put on one of the helmets. It fits snugly to my head and an augmented reality overlay pops up on the inside of the faceguard. A health bar appears over Dean and when I look at his weapon, stats appear in digital green letters.

  Weapon. Plasma Pistol.

  The sword hilt turns out to be a plasma sword. It feels natural in my hand, and when I activate it, a beam of hot white energy shoots out about two and a half feet long.

  “Badass!” Dean’s eyes light up as I slash the sword in front of me.

  I can toggle the blade on and off as needed. There’s also a detailed reading of my own health on the right side of the faceguard, displaying a map of my body segmented into different regions. Currently, they are all green, but I expect that it will change if I’m injured.

  The two orbs are plasma grenades.

  I pick up the chest plate and press it to my body, it opens at the edges and strips of kevlar-like material wrap around my back and sides.

  Armor. Flex-armor. Level 1.

  I focus back on the badges.

  Key card. Technician. Level 4 access.

  Interesting. Does that mean we’ll have to find other key cards as we go along?

  Dean follows my lead, putting on the helmet and then the armor. He picks up a plasma grenade and surprisingly, it sticks to his chest plate like a magnet. I test it out my own armor with my sword and it clings just the same. Not a bad place to store items in a pinch.

  “Are you cool taking the pistol?” I remove the sword and feel its weight against my palm. “Your aim is better than mine.”

  He pries the weapon from his chest and spins it around his finger. “Is that even a question?” He squeezes the trigger gently and the strip of light glows brighter as it charges for a pulse shot. “I’ve seen you play. It’s like watching a barbarian, the way you charge into battle. The sword will suit you just fine.”

  “Alright, alright.” I roll my eyes. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

  With our weapons at the ready, we make our way down the empty corridor until we come to a door. Dean reaches up to scan his badge, but I stop him.

  “Wait a second. We need a plan first. We don’t even know where we are going.”

  “Maybe we can find a map somewhere.”

  “Wait, that’s a great idea.” I play around with the AR overlay on my helmet. There are options for notifications, appearance, voice commands, and much more. I could spend a lot of time setting it up to my exact specifications, but we don’t have time for that. We just need it to do the minimum to get us to the control room. After some trial and error, I pull up a map of the ship. “Go to your settings on the helmet. I think we just hit the jackpot.”

  A blue hologram of a giant spaceship hovers in front of me. It’s shaped like a giant block with rounded edges. A half-dozen massive thrusters protrude from the rear, surrounded by an equal number of smaller thrusters. More run down the sides, top, and bottom of the cargo ship.

  I reach out and touch the hologram. It spins with the movement of my fingers. When I push them together, it zooms in, and when I pull them apart, it zooms back out. A tiny red dot shows my location on the bottom. As I zoom in on the holographic blueprint, I’m able to see numerous cargo bays, hundreds of floors, tunnels, and rooms. This ship is bigger than I ever imagined.

  Dean moves his hands back and forth as he examines the map. “How are we supposed to get through all of this? If we take our time, it could take days to fight our way to the top.”

  I enable voice control on my helmet so that whenever I touch the side of the helmet, it responds to my voice. “Search for control room.” A section of the ship near the upper front glows yellow. “Display the quickest route to the control room.” A zig-zag line forms from our location to the control room.

  Add route to display? pops up in my vision. I accept and a highlight forms along the floor leading from where I’m standing to the door.

  “Alright, scan the badge.”

  Dean swipes it, and the door opens with a hissing sound. My eyes adjust as we step out into a brightly-lit hallway.

  Where the one we came from was some kind of maintenance shaft, this one is clearly for transport. It’s wide enough to fit a vehicle and several lifts are parked to the side. Lights flash along the walls, but there is no sign of life.

  I take an instinctive step back when a loud screech exits a vent overhead. Heavy thumps echo, and the metal sags as something crawls down the shaft.

  “What the heck was that?” Dean stares at the vent.

  “No idea, but it didn’t sound friendly. Let’s get moving.”

  We follow the display route from the helmet as it guides us down the hallway. After we pass through two gateways, I begin to wonder if we’re going to face any obstacles. That thought comes to a halt when Dean scans us through the third gateway.

  The gate slides open, but the passage is blocked. A thick wall of a golden translucent substance distorts the area beyond. A skeleton floats inside the
outer edge of the substance. My helmet beeps as it analyzes the substance.

  Foreign Lifeform. Slime. Slow, deadly, and unintelligent. Slimes absorb the life force of any living creature trapped within its gelatinous confines.

  If these are anything like the slimes I’ve encountered in other worlds, then they are slow but dangerous. While they are easy to evade, getting caught inside one is almost certain death. The floating skeleton is reminder enough not to underestimate the slime.

  Considering it’s blocking the entire entrance, we need to find a way through or around. Ripples travel through the slime as it wobbles, making the lights on the other side bulge and shrink with the movement.

  “How are we getting through?” asks Dean.

  “I don’t know, but the path leads through here and we don’t know that there won’t be something equally as dangerous if we try to detour. Maybe we can try to lure it toward us.”

  “Or…” Dean raises his plasma pistol and fires a shot at the slime.

  The white beam pierces through the slime, turning the translucent yellow a deep brown and charring it black at the edges. Steam pours from the hole as it slowly closes before returning to a calm amber.

  Dean shrugs. “It was worth a shot.”

  “Wait, it wasn’t a bad idea.” The way the slime charred at the edges, if the beam was wider it might stay open for longer. “Try to hit it with the pulse blast.”

  He holds his finger on the trigger and the strip of light down the side of the pistol glows brighter. Once the brightness peaks, he pulls the trigger and a blast much larger than the previous one shoots out.

  Instead of being a single beam, this one is shaped like a ball. It tears through the slime, leaving a hole the size of my head in its wake. The slime turns dark brown once again, this time taking longer to regenerate to its normal state.

  “Hmmm. If we could make a hole big enough, we could probably sneak through.” I equip my plasma sword and head toward the wall of slime.

  I’m unable to tell if there is more slime beyond this construct or if it has all migrated to the gate. I activate my plasma sword and a beam of energy flares to life.

  The slime stands tall as I move several feet away from it. It continues to wobble but doesn’t move toward me. Slimes are not intelligent creatures, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be deadly. Water can be deadly to someone who can’t swim.

  As I raise my sword, the slime blisters at the heat, turning an angry brown. I stab the sword into the slime and it sizzles, charring the gooey creature as it melts its gelatinous body. I attempt to carve a makeshift tunnel when Dean’s panicked voice startles me.

  “Run! It’s falling.”

  I look up just in time to witness the top of the slime peeling away from the ceiling. It arches like a wave about to crash all around me. I stow my sword and sprint toward Dean.

  My haptic suit jars my back as the slime crashes into me. Luckily, only the topmost edge hits me, so instead of making friends with the skeleton inside, I’m knocked forward and fall on my face. I crawl to my feet and turn to see a two-foot-tall blob of slime blocking the entirety of the tunnel. There’s no way we’re making it through this way.

  The slime creeps toward us an inch at a time.

  I shake my head at our misfortune. “Looks like we’re going to need to find an alternate route.”

  “Wait, I think I know a way we can get through here.” Dean flashes me a mischievous grin.

  “And how’s that?” I ask, raising one of my eyebrows.

  He pulls the plasma grenade attached to his chest plate and holds it up.

  “We might need those later,” I counter.

  “Yeah, we might. But we actually need one now.” He spins the gleaming grenade in his palm.

  “Alright, this is your show. If you want to use it now, I support you.” I’m here to help Dean and guide him to the best of my ability, but I’ve decided that he will always get the final say. His future is the one on the line, after all.

  He taps the grenade with his index finger, and it begins to glow while also emitting a faint beeping sound. Dean holds on to it for a second and then tosses it into the center of the slime. The grenade bounces on the gelatinous body before being absorbed inside.

  I turn my head away, expecting a splattering of exploded slime guts to rain down upon us, but the explosion is soft. There’s a wave of heat, and when I turn back around, there are only a few remnants of slime that slowly crawl across the floor toward one another. Dean quickly disposes of them with his plasma pistol.

  “Nice job!” I slap him on the back. He really has a knack for innovative solutions.

  With our path cleared, I follow the guided route into the next section of tunnel. We find more slimes in the following tunnel, but they are spread out and easy to eliminate. Several tunnels diverge up ahead, but we stay true to the route and follow a ramp that leads up to the next level.

  At the top of the ramp, my headset guides us through a door and into a storage area. Hundreds of metal crates fill the dimly-lit room.

  “What do you think is inside?” asks Dean.

  My first instinct is to tell him it doesn’t matter, but then I remember the prompt. Fight your way to the control room, gathering weaponry and armor as you do so.

  “Let’s take a look.”

  It takes both of us to pry the lid off the crate, but it’s a good thing we do. As we move from one crate to another, they are filled with weapons, armor, and attachments.

  “Now, this is cool.” He lifts a weapon that looks like a crab claw. There’s a grip in the center, and two tiny nodules facing one another at the tip of each claw. When his fingers wrap around the grip, the weapon comes to life and a streak of plasma energy connects the two nodes.

  Weapon. Plasma Rifle.

  I search through the contents of the crate, finding some extended energy mags, a sniper rifle, and an armor upgrade that adds a plate on our backs to attach more items.

  We both switch out our armor and open a few more crates. In the end, we find several more plasma grenades, pulse grenades, and a plasma shotgun.

  I go for a plasma rifle, which can work at close to medium distance, and elect to keep the plasma sword. Dean discards his pistol and takes the plasma rifle and the plasma sniper rifle. I’m not sure how useful a sniper rifle will be on the ship, but it’s massive, so there is no telling. We cover the rest of the open space on our armor with as many grenades as we can carry.

  “Not a bad haul.” I attach the last pulse grenade to my chest plate, excited to use them later. Each one pulls nearby inanimate objects toward its center before detonating. “Ready to see what’s up next.”

  Dean charges his weapon for a moment, watching the plasma dance between the nodes. “Let’s do it.”

  Our route leads out of the storage room and into another tunnel. Dean scans his badge, and as soon as we enter the tunnel, there’s an odd clicking noise. I recognize the whir of a weapon being charged and push Dean back into the storage room just as the door closes. A beam of energy hits the crease between the two sides of the door and sparks jump through the other side.

  I take Dean’s badge and open the door again. The unsettling clicks continue to ring out from the other side. I try to peek around the edge to see what we’re up against, but my head barely emerges before another shot sends sparks raining down.

  “What is it?” Dean asks.

  “I don’t know. I can’t get a good look.”

  “Lay down some cover fire, and I’ll take a look.”

  I creep up to the door frame and extend my plasma rifle around the corner, firing off a stream of plasma. Dean pokes his head around like a gopher and retreats just as quickly before another barrage explodes against the door frame. He takes his badge back and closes the door again.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  His face is stark white, mirroring the kid behind the avatar. “Robots. Only, there is something off about them.” His lips curl up like he’s seen something
disturbing.

  “What do you mean? It can’t be that bad.”

  “They’re like spiders. They have these long metal legs that they are using to cling to the walls. And in the center, they’re humanoid, but like a gaunt skeletal body, except it’s all metal. Then there’s a head…with glowing red eyes that they shoot lasers from.” He shivers, rocking from side to side.

  No wonder he’s freaked out. I still remember the spiders from my days at the orphanage. Their glowing red eyes. At least it explains the clicking I heard.

  I pat him on the shoulder. “It’ll be okay. They aren’t real. We just need to find a way to get past them and we’ll be on to the next horrifying monster.”

  He laughs. “Right.”

  “How many did you see?”

  He grimaces. “At least four.”

  “And they are all on the walls?”

  “Three on the wall, one on the ceiling.”

  “Not the best odds, but we’re well-stocked as long as we’re in here. Is there anything we can use for cover in the tunnel?”

  Dean frowns. “I’m not sure. Open the door and I’ll take another look.”

  We’re pressing our luck by constantly opening the door, but we need to know what we’re working with. Not having windows makes these doors great for keeping items stored away but terrible for fighting our way through the ship. I take the badge and swipe it in front of the reader.

  I fire a few rounds into the tunnel as Dean scopes out the landscape. He ducks back in, and I close the door as more sparks rain down.

  He keeps his eyes focused on the door, as if it might spontaneously open at any moment. “There’s not much. A few overturned crates and a transport cart. The good news is that the robot spiders don’t seem to be moving any closer. They just kind of move around where they are.”

  “I don’t know if I would trust that once we’re out in the open, though.” A shiver runs through me as I visualize being pinned to the ground beneath one of the gruesome creatures.