by D. Rus
I found this satisfactory. Peering into the darkness, I mapped out an initial familiarization route – a sort of a victory lap inside the small hall. Jogging for 20 seconds, looting for 30, and escaping in the remaining 20.”
I closed my eyes, resting them and maxing out their photosensitivity. I was no cyborg, but I had a few tricks up my sleeve.
Muromets understood and straightened himself up, preparing to either help me out or finish me off. A myriad of orders flowed down the commander interface as he called upon the weakened and slightly offended heavy infantrymen to provide backup. Their postmortal debuffs had tied their hands in a way, but a dozen against one was a pretty safe bet. Math rules, and gods love big battalions.
Keeping my eyes closed, I quietly related my plan, “I’m going in. The implant guarantees me 72 seconds of invincibility. After that, things get risky. If I catch the worm, I won’t bring it back here. But if my defenses win, don’t keep me out, have a little bit of faith in me.”
Muromets hesitated for an unbearably long time, then briefly responded in glyphs. “Ok.” He grumbled, “Look at me before you go. I want to see reason in your eyes, not panic.”
I replied in glyphs: “Ok, Roger that.”
I opened my eyes, staring straight ahead like a predator. Bending down a bit, I started at a light jog.
The hall was carpeted with an unknown species of moss. Multiple berries got squashed under my feet, exploding with blue juice. I picked up a few of them on the way, popping them in my mouth. I ignored the taste and system logs – I had no time.
I tripped over the railway in the center. Apparently, a spacious magnetic levitation wagon used to run up and down this hall back in the day.
To prevent myself from falling, I shamefully ran on all fours for a second before getting back up. Yet every cloud has a silver lining; the handful of moss that I had ripped out while picking berries was sent to the crooked loot-pouch hanging on my belt.
I held my breath as my interface advised against inhaling too much contaminated air. Of course, the nanoterminators would find a way into my organism anyway. I itched and felt twinges in the most inconvenient areas of my body, trying not to think about the battles raging there.
The guaranteed protection timer bounced around as it accounted for victories and losses, either scaring me or giving me hope.
The location was mostly empty, being a hallway. I saw three dead bodies by the walls and a dead xenomorph form droid overgrown with moss. There was a reach-through hole the size of a fist in its head. Half of the droid had been melted to be unnaturally smooth. Its loot was probably scanty.
I was behind schedule a bit, having 23 seconds left. Curiosity killed more than just a cat.
I bent over the first corpse, feeling my comrades’ heavy stares. Lina was alarmed. The younger boys and girls looked at me with admiration. I also felt jealous thoughts coming from the group: May your leg get stuck in a crack. Indeed, several of the group harbored ill will toward me.
My implant dedicated a few percent of its resources to scan the corpse. The interface highlighted the badges of rank and the membership emblem on the dead man’s uniform jacket along with his more valuable gear. It displayed hints regarding the fastest way to break the fasteners and loot the body.
The corpse was identified as an onboard security officer. In his open holster was a heavy replica of a TT-plasma gun featuring a more ergonomic design. The extra battery slots were empty, just like the magazines for the reaction mass which generated plasma currents.
Apparently, this officer had to do a lot of shooting. He had been under fire; the hungry flora had picked him to the bone, and I saw ten tiny holes in his skeleton. The railgun – whether a stationary model or not – still worked.
Sorry, buddy, I thought as I broke his spine with a sharp kick and tore off his belt containing all the goodies: an “unbreakable” tablet in sleep mode, a stack-shocker, a smart-first-AID kit, and the holster with the TT.
I then tore the universal access badge off his jacket. It probably wouldn’t work without a two-level authentication, but I couldn’t leave it.
I also snatched various sundries out of his pockets: stimulants “Taiga Wind” and “Nocturnal Power” and a pack of cigarettes “Cronus is ours!” The latter – judging by the orange sticker – were loaded with heavy, semi-legal substances.
A buzzer went off in my head; I had five seconds left for the current stage.
Making a wry face, I mentally apologized to the dead man again, then shook his bones out of his soft, well-preserved boots. They had class 3 armor, an upgradable size of 38-44, six programmed color modes, morphing soles, resistance to rupture and pressure of up to 1500 pounds, and breathable bactericidal material.
A thing-in-itself! I thought, A rare artifact! With these, I could run on lava like a lizard, leaving footprints in it. Not that such a run would last long.
I darted back. As had been agreed, I winked at Muromets, barely refraining from sticking my tongue out at him. One must not flaunt his success. Success must be logical, firm, and expected. That’s what makes it success.
I nodded in response to the approving cheers, ignoring the comments of the smooth-tongued and the fake smiles. Sitting down on a hummock, I kicked off the foot wraps that we all wore and put on my trophy boots. The deceased officer had been a fop; to pay a two weeks’ salary for boots seemed almost pathological. In any case, I was most grateful to him. I owed him a comfy grave facing East.
Rising, I put on his belt, ignoring the jealous looks. Those who wanted to could go in and get their own. On the other hand, sharing was the most important part of leading a group. I had to give out a part of my loot.
So, I pulled out the pack of smokes and with a flick of my fingers extracted a thin, brown cigarette. “Well, boys, let’s light up,” I offered indifferently.
Chapter Nine
The group smoked with great enthusiasm. The unknown weed produced an insidious high, shutting off our locomotor systems and allowing us to think incredibly clearly – something we could rarely do in this hot, poisonous, low-oxygen noob location. Anyone who has climbed the world’s tallest mountains or used to wake up with hangovers is familiar with this heavy head feeling that this environment gave us.
Chilling in a comfy capsule, I angrily refused my implant’s offer to clean my blood. I realized how many mistakes we had made because we were just so groggy.
Such was the effect of a low habitability index; fatigue, a dulled brain, wearing down of life support modules, a short lifespan. We died nearly every 24 hours.
I grinded my teeth, Thanks, lesson learned. Increasing the HI was now a top-priority task, just like the primary goals of this training; survival, self-development, and constantly moving forward and up, to the flight decks.
Lina threw up. The effects of carbon dioxide poisoning such as brain fog and unhealthy excitation had temporarily subsided. I could see some of the images surfacing in the girl’s mind: skulls broken with a metal pipe, mangled faces, blows to the back of the head sending eyeballs flying out of their sockets.
Ouch. I felt nauseous myself. Of course, we were inside a game. But this fact was becoming harder and harder to believe. Our feelings were completely real. This virtual reality was flawless, ideal, and too painful. I sarcastically thanked it for the 300 percent nerve conduction increase. To squeeze a pimple was a heroic feat under such conditions.
Also, thanks to the Amazonians’ cruel humor, we could never know for sure where and who we were. The cynical mind games had gone too far.
The soldiers wept and sniveled. The sudden psychological relief and the lifting of the drug-induced veil off our minds made us once again realize the utter horror of our situation, reminding us of the families and loved ones we no longer had, and of our infinitely faraway homes…
Taking advantage of the temporary lucid interval, I passed on all these thoughts and considered all possible further developments. Only a small part of my consciousness was focused on
the personal, on Lina.
Who was she to me? A half-mad man-hater? Or just a crew member who had gotten tied to my aura against her will, yet was willing to give her life for me? I could feel that she would if she had to. But then, I myself was willing to cross that line for the sake of my other half. You simply couldn’t avoid a fight when that meant leaving half of yourself for the enemy.
We were two captains on one ship. A patriarchal wolf cub raised by a pack leader and a loner feminist female cruelly hurt by jackals. Where would we sail our ship? Oh, you lonely rock in the middle of an ocean, we won’t escape you! Sharpen your fangs on the salty waves; we’re coming!
Again, the age-old question plagued my thoughts, Who’s at fault and what to do? Obviously, accusing someone was pointless. I had made this decision myself, consciously accepting the risks. To blame some mythical personage was stupid, unproductive, and unmanly.
As for what course of action to take, I had infinitely many options. Judging by the slowly appearing new locations and loot, the virtual training ground had retained the structure of ancient RPG games.
The leveling-up methods were the same, only made more realistic. Gathering, for example, was the first step for noobs and a mandatory stage in crafters’ development. The location provided all the things necessary: the moss, the technical junk, and the opportunity to disassemble solid objects.
The monotonous farming consisted of routine, hours-long activities with predictable outcomes: sawing away hatch locks, breaking doors, punching through walls. The math was simple; hours of work times a malicious random coefficient.
Keenness of observation and nonstandard actions were the secret bonuses of different levels. A good example was that hole in the heat exchanger area with its slugs and the comfortable warmth it brought. Temporarily brought, that is.
Quests entailed communication with various characters. The droid with its missions is a good illustration. The droid, however, agreed to communicate only out of hopelessness, after its batteries had died. So far, it was the only semi-living creature who could more or less provide some answers. I had already completed one of the droid’s missions, receiving fair points for it. I would have to talk to it some more. I was sure that the droid would be more than happy to generate quests to clean up the nanoterminator. But we would need more than just firepower to win them.
Combat, of course, played a key role. The harder the fight, the richer the rewards. Judging by how our barricade by the faraway bulkhead gate was steadily falling apart, we wouldn’t have to wait long until our first skirmish. That meant we needed weapons. Immediately.
My TT-plasma gun with a washed-out star on its handle had an almost full cartridge of condensed gas – the reaction mass necessary for plasma cloud formation. The gun’s battery, however, was dead, its slot half-melted.
I had plucked it out, of course. Now, our mechanics were hurriedly taking apart any and all technology we had in order to come up with some sort of battery replacement. Good thing the space force had standard batteries; a battery of any voltage and capacity could be assembled from basic parts. The TT featured an assemblage of 24 kilovolt sheets fastened with a sturdy latch.
My firewall recovery timer hit zero. It was time for me to go in again, to loot and make more soldiers envious of me. The loot was the reason the group had tried to run into the new hall all at once. Death was painful, but virtual, whereas the loot was tangible and improved one’s status.
I wondered why the heavy infantrymen’s implants lasted for mere seconds. Of course, they were no match for my Alpha-prime, but to break instantly like a TV remote control was ridiculous.
I asked my symbiont this. Hearing the answer, I froze for a moment, then burst out laughing, unintentionally alarming and insulting the weeping group members in the nearby capsules.
My implant explained: “Group recommendations. Change default passwords on heavy infantry implants’ admin panels to unique passwords. Factory password ‘user:123456’ is unsafe.”
Having laughed to my heart’s content, I checked my own password. The Russian mechanic had a sense of humor; the modest password ‘GO_tO_HeLl_wiTH_UR_Brutef0rce!!!111’ would definitely never be cracked with an exhaustive search in a thousand years.
I added a few more digits just in case, and activated the three-step authentication module by giving the mental go-ahead and giving it a random sequence from my password. The module added a number to the sequence – my birth year divided by that day’s date.
My cigarette went out. I pensively twirled the stub in my fingers, looking at the tempting sign on it that read “Eat me! Taiga dust content – 318 mg. Double your income!”
The implant barked out at that, bringing the disciplinary regulations articles to the front. I itched to break every single one to see what would happen, but these were the regulations of the Russian Empire, after all…
So, my implant retained at least a portion of the native firmware? I thought. Why thank you, Kind Doctor. It was like wearing the striped vest of a Russian sailor and a fur cap with ear flaps among the valiant American marines. An utter set-up.
I hurriedly pulled up the settings of my unlicensed symbiont. At first glance, things weren’t so bad. The Alpha-prime was recognized as a friendly device by all systems capable of running the ‘friend-or-foe’ check. According to the logs, 49 years ago, the implant had accepted a service information batch and had passed all the certificate tests with flying colors. It was subjected to a routine checkup once a year. Two weeks ago, right before being installed on me, it had received a 1TB update patch.
However, the mechanic who performed the integration of the implant into the Fifth Rome Space Force did a poor job. Or maybe he just didn’t see any other way to complete the given task. In any case, when he received admin access to the implant, he simply switched the system status to “ally,” then changed the bearer’s duty site to the Eternal City. A thickheaded strategy, like changing the time zone on a Windows.
Everything was tiptop in appearance. But in reality, the implant’s core processor still considered itself and its bearer to be a warrior of the Russian Empire Space Force. That meant I was in for all sorts of surprises…
The invisible arbiter decided that we had rested enough. Our interface buzzers went off in alarm, alerting us to the points we lost for smoking in closed spaces. The habitability index had dropped again, and by much more than one might expect from 20 cigarettes. To make their point, the invisible arbiters made a part of our already sprouting moss plantations turn black and wither, as if the delicate weed just couldn’t survive the turquoise smoke of modified cedar cones. The bastards!
With a loud alarm signal, I yanked the group out of their sentimental visions. Rise and shine, soldiers! Step-motherland needs your feats of arms!
I had to kick the slow and the more rebellious group members. Sometimes, you must rule with actions, not just words. No wonder that in all the ancient armies, the hunting crop was the most valuable instrument among officers; the organism perceives pain receptor signals much better than the signals from auditory receptors.
I assembled a corporal team, taking a few smarter boys and one girl with me to be the future nucleus of our communication staff. While everyone’s heads were more or less clear, I put them on the top priority task – to develop a way to defeat the monster that was trying to break in.
It was self-evident that the monster’s each blow was deadly. The creaking of the armor composite dispelled all doubts. We estimated the assailant’s height based on the height of the dents. The dents that appeared simultaneously indicated the reach of the monster’s chelae or whatever it used to pound on the bulkhead gate.
We pensively scratched our heads. The girls disliked that our hair had been shaved off, as not everyone enjoyed looking like G.I. Jane. Those of us who had been bald in our past lives were glad that there was now anything to shave off at all.
The strength and size of the unknown monster made us tense. What is behind that gate? A T-90 t
ank? A rabid mithril mammoth? A crazy morph made of a hundred bodies?
“Put a lookout at the bulkhead gate,” I ordered. “Take that barricade down, it’s a waste of supplies. Wait until the monster makes the first hole. I’ll make a second trip to Skynet Central Core. Be back in three minutes. Meanwhile, think, heathen tribe.”
The second time was much easier. The implant managed to create a 3D map of the hallway. The interface graphics completed the darker areas, labeling walls, corners, sparking cables, and the sharp edges of titanium accessories.
The amount of time I could spend in the hot zone increased. First, all the outgrowths containing the more aggressive cysts were now marked on the map along with the oval space that the worms could access. The assault nanites covered a 16-foot area with the diversionist nests. The latter, in turn, could attack anything with 30 paces. But beyond that distance, the threat was much lower. The orange highlights turned yellow, indicating that any attacks would definitely be deflected.
The implant sent me on a complex route, estimating the total density of the nanotrap as “sufficient for peripheral class B objects.”
The implant prudently kept me out of areas where three or more colonies overlapped, highlighting the Assault-hive cysts with a crimson color. I could hear it droning quietly: “…strong and durable… old masters’ work, no doubt. They don’t make them anymore, the technologies are lost… they churn out the cheap Poltergeists and Banshees by the kiloton, but those are no good… All right, maybe they are… but they are second-rate. But back in the day, a ball of cysts could be the size of a fist! It dealt as much damage as a direct hit with a highest-caliber hard steel plug of the battleship Armavir. And that means a 200-kiloton equivalent.”
I spent 10 seconds by a wall which my interface had marked. According to my implant, the wall contained an emergency supply box for individual rescue. It was mandatory that such boxes were available in all modules on RE ships; a standard kit for all of the module’s inhabitants plus 30 percent reserves. A hallway like this was by no means as loot-rich as barracks, but I was sure that this box contained at least something.
