Slipdrift (VayneLine)

by E. A. Szabelski

  Further, the ICS voice had a full grip on my senses; somehow they had planted a transmitter on me to see what I was experiencing. Lastly, there was something with our light rifle, something that made its power run out of control to fire its random killing shots, but I had no idea how someone triggered anything.

  “What did you find out?” I asked the voice.

  “The real shots are on a base eight system. These guns were made by Kilons, who have eight fingers per appendage so it makes sense. Once you find your first real shot, the next one comes every 8th after that.”

  “Thanks,” I whispered to the corner of the cell. I wondered what he looked like. I hope he didn’t die.

  ***

  Never had the time before the game passed as fast as when I was looking at all the faces, trying to figure out who the voice of my adjacent cell mate might be. Why the hell weren’t they making a move towards me? Then I realized he probably didn’t know who I was either.

  I asked the Behemon if he wanted to run a certain strategy, but he did not respond. He only told me to stay away from him this game; I was disappointed he no longer felt like being my ally. I tried to not let his lack of will infect me. Down here, losing the will to live was a highly contagious disease.

  ***

  The first part of the round was fairly uneventful. Since I knew I was in a harder group, I played a more careful game: utilizing cover, conserving drift for key dodges, saving a majority of my ammo by taking aimed shots. But all of that didn’t really matter with what happened next.

  I was swaying through the pillars, leaving my pursuer behind with my superior moves and cover fire when something caught my eye and left me in shock. I plowed into a pillar, and only my inertial compensator saved me from suicide-ing myself in a bloody, watery mess.

  Out in the vast desert, the huge Behemon was bellowing a deep war cry. Around it were bodies of those he had disabled with his light rifle. He took one of their bodies and hefted it like it was nothing, throwing it into the one-way wall not that far from him. Predictably, the body exploded apart. Seeing the gore seemed to only enrage him further as he threw another body he had in a pile at the wall.

  What the hell was he doing? Someone came drifting up, telling him to stop. The Behemon lifted his rifle to shoot the guy, but then both his drift and his rifle died. He fell to the sand and started running at the guy. The other person lifted his rifle and fired more than eight shots at the charging Behemon. As strong as that alien body was, I still have a hard time blocking out the vile result of the light explosions within his frame.

  I stopped, instant nausea over what I had just seen wrenching its way up my throat. I started throwing up, trying to lean forward to keep going, knowing I would be killed if I didn’t. The gyroscopes of my unit took my heaving as movement commands. I was drifting into a pillar, scraping it and going nowhere while I vomited on myself.

  ‘Shit, get it together, get it together, you are going to be killed!’

  “Come on!” A powerful hand gripped my arm and yanked me with its momentum. I looked up bleary-eyed at a black-haired man with a sword tattoo on his face.

  I shook my head rapidly, spitting out to clear my mouth and slapping myself to focus. I was going to kill him, I had to kill him before he killed me.

  I was trying to refocus when we were suddenly flying. He had drifted upwards, carrying me with him, an explosion of light radiated out where we just were.

  “Remember, eight!”

  With that single admission, I realized the dark-haired man was my cellmate, the one with whom I held a secret contract for the two of us to escape. He was the same person we once tried to club each other down. ‘Sword’ was in fact my ally despite our earlier attempts of killing each other.

  “I’m okay,” I said almost more to myself, realizing he had saved me for whatever purpose we were to achieve. I lifted the rifle and sprayed a sniper behind a pillar.

  We came down off the landing, and I slaved my unit to his, turning around as he drove forward, dodging around dunes. Without worrying about dodging I was able to perform much better on the rifle, scoring some impressive long-range shots. I knew I was getting close to the 8th, and blasted three rounds out nearby us when the killer round came out. Now I had seven shots that would not kill.

  I had to figure out what was different about this rifle. I lifted my eyes, swept around us and didn’t see anything behind us. Holding the rifle, I ran my fingers over it as fast as I could, never actually paying attention to the details before now.

  Partially I was regretful I had never actually paid that much attention in all the games I played. I closed my eyes, only a bit mindful of the soft swaying my body was experiencing as we pulled incredible acrobatic feats. My hands ran over the rifle, and I realized something was different: it felt smoother on the under barrel than I thought normal.

  In my mind I ran through the movement, and there was definitely a box or rail on the normal guns that was not present here.

  My eyes flashed open in a moment of brilliance: the limiter. These rifles were not equipped with limiters! That’s why some of the rounds could so catastrophically destroy their target! Light rifles and their partner drift unit both operated on a small fusion generator. The drift unit used all of its power to run the thrust and the inertial compensators, but the rifle did not have anything extra to run, thus they HAD to be limited because of the massive surplus of energy produced.

  These ‘light rifles’ were actually fusion cannons. That’s what the secret was. The reason they destroyed everything within the arena but not the walls was probably because there was a containment field that stopped the burst from actually damaging the wall.

  “I need some kills!” I yelled, trying to balance my realization with a stark reality. On command, we suddenly spun half a circle, a target suddenly right in front of me. I shot a quick pack of rounds, the sand around the target glassing as he fell to the ground disabled rather than blown apart. “Get to some cover, we need to talk.”

  He jetted over to an area that was partially protected on the backside, while we both watched the front. He was watching the ground, and I was watching the sky.

  “These rifles are missing their limiter,” I quickly spoke though we were not looking at each other, “that’s why they are capable of killing. I think we could blast our way out of this, but there has to be a containment field stopping the shot directed at the walls.”

  “Are we both in the top five?” he asked before proceeding. We both glanced at our bracelets. He was 1st and I was 3rd, but the last two players were too far behind to push me out. “I used to be a drift tech in between being a gamer. I think I know a way that might work.” He disconnected my slave from his unit, turning around to face me. “Aim through my drift field. They have their own containment lines which might counteract the wall’s effect, essentially making an anti-containment envelope for the shot. You are slipping the rifle’s containment field into my drift’s field, and I think it might be what we are looking for.”

  “What if they realize we found out a secret?” Part of my mind looked at the naked man’s musculature; toned and fit, he lacked the scars of a dark life like I had led, but that in no way indicated he was at all weak.

  “Damn, you are right. We need to make it look like an accident, and we didn’t notice. Come on bastard!” His voice suddenly turned hostile. What was he doing?

  He launched at me, grappling me as we slowly floated in a slow circle, he whispered when I started fighting back, “Shoot your rifle through the field.” He let his left arm weaken its grip while I lifted my rifle and pulled the trigger as my barrel was adjacent to the backside of his drift unit.

  I stopped fighting completely when the huge purple blast exploded out of my gun, ripping forward, blowing a perfect hole through three huge dunes before gravity and sand fell down and filled in the matter that had just been annihilated. “Keep fighting!” he whispered in harsh tones.

  I smirked and pushed his arm down and
elbowed him across the face. He spun away, blood leaking from where I had nailed him. Before we could re-engage, the game was over and our drift units took on a different hum. “Got a little too into it,” he said, wiping his nose and flinging the blood to the sand. “I can’t believe it though, the slipdrift works.”

  Right after that our two grav-lock bracelets both triggered and we fell to the sand, pulled apart and locked to the ground. I was glad they triggered it on us: that meant someone thought there was a chance we would fight each other after the game was over.

  “It works. Completely.” I turned away from facing him, trying to play up the role that we hated each other.

  ***

  I sat there in a brooding silence, staring at the far side of my own personal cave. Across from me was a new alien, a spindly Pilo, staring at me with its huge blank eyes that composed a majority of its face. It kept asking me questions, when I told its bulbous face it was my fifth game he never shut up until I yelled at him. It looked at me as some sort of savior, someone that would get him out of this nightmare daze it was in.

  I hated him for even thinking he could take the Behemon’s place. I wanted to ram my fist through its face for even being here.

  It was my fifth game, but that fact did not even matter. I had witnessed the mental break that was possible when someone’s only hope was taken away. In a distant thought, I realized this plan likewise held all of my hope in it. If it didn’t work, I didn’t really care what happened to me; my fatalism was indeed reaching fatal levels.

  “You ready to do this?” came the whisper from the corner. I lay down in the mud to put my face as close to the field as I could. The cold did not even register anymore as my body had become numb to almost everything except this one chance at escape.

  “Yeah. It takes almost all of your drift to get that high. We are going to have to slave our systems for sure, if we want any room to negotiate at all,” I whispered back.

  We lay in silence, listening to the soft drips, which had taken on the volume of screams to our trained ears. When only the normal sounds of the dungeon greeted us, we continued.

  “Rear gunner again?” he asked.

  “I am fine with it, but do you know where you are going?” I paused for a moment and gave it some thought. “ Actually, I’ll just do it. Meet me on the upper C-shaped pillar, slave yours as fast as you can. Then we are rolling.”

  Drift units worked in a way that carrying someone did not noticeably increase your expenditure of allotted drift. The reality was the grav unit was capable of moving vast masses, and it was only the rules of the game that would have increased or decreased the overall usage. The obvious disadvantage was a single shot would net the shooter a quick double kill. They liked that kind of drama.

  I continued, “I’ll shoot until I find my 8th, then I am concentrating only on flying. Make sure you synch your rifle to the right shot in time.”

  “This might just work, otherwise we could end up like our late friend there.” I knew he suggested the Behemon’s cell. He used ‘might’, I don’t think he realized if it didn’t work, we were both done. Either the fall, a player shooting us, or the fatalism would doom us.

  “He wasn’t my friend,” I answered harshly, trying to sound tougher perhaps for my own sake. Truthfully though, I was crying a little bit from the lie. Both from losing an ally, and the fear I might succumb to a similar fate.

  ***

  In the dark for my final game, the only thing I could think about was the cold eyes from everyone in this round, thinking this was their chance at escape. If this was not someone’s fifth game that meant they were even better than me to begin with which also was alarming. A lot of them had not seen the Behemon’s story, so would still not know there was no escape.

  I was in a very advanced pool of players. They all had the spark to varying degrees, and that was what scared me. Any of them could have been my ally, and now they are the only things stopping me.

  “Engage!” The light of the bright artificial desert flooded my dark-adjusted eyes. Before I even got out of the door, a light blast exploded in the opposite corner of where I had started. The shooter, somewhere across the field, had planned on taking a gamble of a first shot at getting a slow exit. I was spared merely by chance by being on the opposite side.

  For the first time a legitimate fear overtook me that our plan could not be so easily executed versus these good players. I got away from the wall as quick as I could, getting to a set of pillars, spinning back and forth on my glide to make sure I was not tailed. I found a slight bump in the base of a pillar of a fairly concealed sniper. I sprayed a set of rounds near the ground and the area-of-effect burst sent him collapsing into the sand.

  I was on the ‘backside’ of the pillars, meaning there was only a small section between me and the wall, leaving me protected from the main front area. I shot four shots at a piece of cover, putting me at the 8th of the cycle.

  I did a quick scan and jumped upwards, stalling my drift for a moment before I came full on to the top of the pillars. The only person up here was my black-haired ally, crouching and sniping figures on the ground, sliding along the pillars to change his position lest he be caught by a desperate spray of a clip.

  I triggered an over-ride and shot upwards a bit more and came onto the pillar, saying nothing and only moving towards him. I knew sound was an instant trigger for some to turn and fire at. He swung his rifle at me, and for a moment thought this was all an elaborate trick to get me to trust him so he could end me.

  Luckily, he lowered his rifle and jetted over to me.

  “Slave it and roll.” I turned to face upwards at the very tip of the dome. It was so far from here, impossibly far; both the height and the mission seemed like a fool’s errand. There were shorter buildings on this planet than the twenty stories I estimated we had to fly up from the already high outlook we were on.

  “Got it.” I felt him slap my back two quick times, and I jerked my head up hard, the thin strip of high land left us behind as we took to the sky. I was concentrated solely on getting us to the tip as fast as I could with as much drift as possible while I could vaguely sense him still taking careful shots at anyone looking towards the sky.

  “Drift reserves down to five Jega’s remaining,” my bracelet informed me. Not enough drift, we were not going to make it. It seems they had made carrying another body use more drift than we had estimated. Did they know our plan, or was this just a miscalculation?

  “Three….two…one…”

  “Switch now!” I yelled to him. On command he swung upwards around me, my rifle going straight into his rear drift field as I pulled the trigger on the 8th shot. The huge pink flash exploded out, ripping straight through the ceiling and blasting away an upper floor, and for the first time in a very long time I saw the night sky before the light explosion blinded me.

  At about the same time my fear paralyzed me. I was out of drift, and it was him slaved onto me. With my blinded eyes I was aware of the weightlessness as I started falling the long distance back to the ground. My goal was so close, but now over. The fact we would explode across the ground seemed a fitting end to our attempt at escape.

  “We aren’t out of this yet!” I felt something jerk my right shoulder strap as I was pulled upwards. I rapidly realized the destiny the two of us were both pulling each other through: I got us here but used more than we expected, and his extra drift saved us by pulling us the extra little bit. A destiny we probably would have failed at if it weren’t for the two of us supporting each other with a small hope of escape.

  With his extra drift we were able to fly through the hole I had blasted. I pointed my rifle away from where I hoped he was and squeezed seven more shots into the room we had suddenly entered, counting with single-minded focus the numbers of stunning rounds up to the non-limited fusion blast of the eighth.

  Neither us, nor anyone in that room could tell what was happening amid the blinding light. I single-mindedly only counted the trigger
pulls, counting amid the chaotic light.

  Within moments the light had faded, but the chemical reactions in our eyes took longer, even with nanites assistance to restore our vision. Feriko was standing out of his chair, holding his eyes in the process of yelling, “Stop the game!” as his glass of wine slowly exploded across the floor.

  Without waiting for an explanation or a justification, I pulled the trigger on the 8th shot, consuming his body and those near him in a small volcano of light that instantly ended his existence. The entire action had been so fast, the two of us were able to make it into this room and use our light rifles before anyone could disable them.

  I was forgetting something, and it was burning me alive.

  “Our bracelets!”

  He nodded, lifting the rifle to my two hands. I held them away from me as he put the barrel to a part of them and blew them into atoms with his 8th shot. One Jega later he fell to the floor, his bracelets grav-locking. Mine locked down, surprising given a fourth of them was missing, but they only scraped their way off my arms.

  “Save me!” His voice had a hint of command and a mix of fear of betrayal more than requiring assistance like the words implied.

  I looked around for that damn Aelisha to pump my rounds into, wanting to kill her just for being a part of this corruption; my hand was still scarred from the deep cut. With no one alive around, I shot seven into the hallway before going over to him, blasting one cuff off. I cycled another seven and blasted part of the other off. He shot up, grabbing me before shouting, “Get our drift units off!”

  Being prisoners, our grav-locks would be easier to shut down, but any moment they would seal us into our drift units. With practiced ease I hit the two major toggles, and slapped the two others as it fell apart around me.

  I threw my rifle down and shoved my harness off moments before I heard it power down and constrain around the now empty area where my body had been.

  “Got a plan now?” he asked hurriedly. In truth, I had lived only for that moment, and now that it was passed, I did not have any idea of what to do now.