Axillon99

by Matthew S. Cox

  According to Nighthawk, ‘that was only what the jealous people said.’

  “Hey everyone,” said Angel813. “Sorry I’m late. The ER was nuts. We had an influx of injuries tonight. Bad accident on I-91.”

  “Ouch,” said Kavan. “Hope it wasn’t too bad.”

  She sighed while lowering herself to sit. “One man died on the scene. Semi-truck nailed his subcompact, but it set off like a forty car pileup. Most of the other injuries were on the minor side at least, but so many.” In reality, Angel813 worked as a nurse in Hartford, Connecticut. Though they had exchanged emails and she knew the woman’s real name was Christina, they’d never met.

  Nighthawk and Kavan both cringed.

  Fawkes got up and went to the food printer, dialing up a choco-coffee. “Damn. That sucks. Makes me glad I don’t drive.”

  “You don’t?” asked Nighthawk with a look of surprise. “Why not?”

  “I live in the city. No need.”

  “Which city?” asked Nighthawk.

  “Damn New Yorkers,” said Kavan, chuckling. “Manhattan isn’t the city.”

  Fawkes stuck her tongue out.

  “Oh, that’s not too far. What are the odds?” Angel813 smiled. “I wonder if the game does that on purpose?”

  “Does what?” asked Nighthawk.

  “Where are you from, for real?” Fawkes slid back into her seat and sipped at chocolate-coffee-foam-awesome.

  “Philly,” said Nighthawk.

  “Oh, like Kavan.” Rallek, Eric’s technomancer, strolled in, grinning. Faint cyan highlights glowed here and there on his matte-black armor. The fabric parts trailed after him like a hybrid between a wizard’s robe and an anarchist’s trench coat. Small devices on his forearms and belt blinked and moved about, charged with magic. A splash of bright violet broke up the solid black of his hair over his left temple. The character shared Eric’s darker skin tone, though his facial structure appeared ‘prettier.’ He wound up looking like the evil prince from an anime movie, which made him seem like Nighthawk’s nemesis.

  “Hey!” Fawkes perked up in her seat, smiling at him.

  “Uhh, yeah.” Nighthawk leaned back in his seat, eyeing the game board. “We live near each other. Come on, old man. Your move.”

  “Old man is it now?” Kavan whistled, shaking his head―while smiling. “All right.” He tapped a blue creature that somewhat resembled the Simarin, tall, thin, and robed. The three-inch alien stepped two squares diagonally left before shooting a tri-fork lightning bolt that incinerated three of Nighthawk’s pieces. “I think if you analyze all probable outcomes of the game from this point forward, you’ll realize your best result is a draw with an eighty percent chance of loss.”

  “Dammit!” Nighthawk scowled. “I hate this game.”

  “You’re playing a strategy game against a strategist, and you’re not a strategist,” said Rallek.

  Nighthawk glanced over at him. “What do you mean I’m not a strategist?”

  “It’s obvious. You went gunslinger. It’s not a thinker’s class.” Rallek summoned a small techno-orb, which proceeded to weave around his fingers.

  “Ha. Ha.” Nighthawk rolled his eyes.

  “Okay,” said Kavan. “Since we’re all here, we can take on that privateer mission tonight.”

  “Wait.” Fawkes summoned the data pad from her inventory. “I got some awesome news first.”

  Everyone looked at her.

  She jumped to her feet, bouncing on her toes. Small compartments on her armor full of random ‘rogue tools’ jangled and clattered. “I got the drop for the contest mission!”

  “Nice!” Angel813’s eyes widened.

  Nighthawk didn’t appear impressed.

  “What?” Fawkes deflated a bit, glancing over the table at him. “It’s a chance at a buttload of money.”

  “I got that drop two days ago.” A similar data pad appeared in Nighthawk’s hand. “It’s not a rare drop… it’s got like a fifteen percent chance to drop on any kill. Getting on the quest isn’t the hard part. The mission itself is a total bitch.”

  Kavan shot Nighthawk a dark look.

  “Oh.” Fawkes sank into her seat.

  Rallek patted her on the shoulder. “You can share the quest with me. I still haven’t gotten the drop. Nice find.”

  She brightened. “Okay.”

  “I don’t have it either. Been too busy,” said Angel813.

  “He does have a point though.” Kavan shut off the chess game with a short, sharp wave. “That contest is supposed to be impossible. There’s sixteen million players, it’s a damn certainty someone with nothing better to do with their life is gonna beat us to it.”

  “Nineteen,” muttered Nighthawk.

  “What?” Rallek glanced at him.

  “There’s nineteen million players now. People are checking out the new helmet. They even have fart mods.” Nighthawk grinned.

  “Hard pass,” said Fawkes. “I gotta deal with Trent already.”

  “Huh?” asked Kavan.

  “One of the guys at the café I work with… I’m amazed the food doesn’t rot in the cooler with him around. Dude destroys the atmosphere at least twice an hour. At least he’s still in high school and only part time.”

  “He might have a condition,” said Angel813. “If he’s breaking wind that often, he should go get checked out.”

  Fawkes laughed. “I’m exaggerating a bit. But I’m not going to install a mod just so I can gag on ass gas in virtual reality.”

  Nighthawk laughed.

  The mission log screen appeared as a floating hologram in front of her. She tapped on the contest quest and hit the share button. Similar ephemeral display panels scrolled open in front of Rallek and Angel813.

  “Right, so we’ve been sitting on this mission for a while. Now that we’re all here, I’d like to get it done. Big experience payout on it.” Kavan grinned.

  Fawkes looked at her mission log. ‘The Scarlet Saber [Group/SHIP 5]’ showed an XP reward of 75,000 and a gold icon for loot rating, the best possible shy of being in a raid. “Sounds good.”

  “Sorry it took me so long to be available,” said Angel813. “Work’s been kicking my ass.”

  Nighthawk grinned.

  “No need to apologize.” Kavan shook his head. “This is only a game.”

  “Yeah, same here.” Rallek flicked a finger, which caused the orb circling his hand to disappear. “Been getting stuck late at the office too damn often.”

  Kavan opened the star map in a large floating display panel and pointed at a glowing peach-colored swirl a few inches left of the middle. “Our objective is to take on a pirate corvette operating under the designation Scarlet Saber.”

  “Can we just blow it up?” asked Angel813. “I hate boarding missions. So cramped.”

  “That is an option.” Kavan tapped his fingers on the table.

  Fawkes brushed her hand over the polished steel, noticing for the first time it felt cold. She’d gotten used to the game world not having all the sensations and smells of reality due to bandwidth limitations… but with the Neurona 4, it had taken a leap forward, scarily close to reality. Even her new gun pressed into her side uncomfortably. Her equipment had never done that before.

  Maybe this upgrade was a bad idea. She chuckled mentally.

  “There’s slaves though,” said Nighthawk, sounding urgent. “Bonus objective is to rescue them.”

  Rallek nodded. “Yeah. According to this guide I read, one of the slaves is the start point for another quest that’s worth a shitload of XP.”

  Nighthawk laughed at Rallek, earning a smirk from Kavan.

  “They’re not really slaves,” said Angel813. She summoned a dark maroon alien-cat-thing with massive almond-shaped onyx eyes. The vanity pet, a harmless ‘decorative’ companion, trilled and mewled as she petted it. “Just pixels. If we take the Scarlet Saber out in a space battle, we get the experience in a quarter of the time. We could do some other mission and make more experience in th
e same time than fighting through the hallways of an enemy ship on foot.”

  “How in-character of you,” quipped Rallek with a wink.

  “I dunno.” Nighthawk fidgeted. “Feels bad to blow the ship up with innocent people on board.”

  “They’re not people. They’re computer code.” Angel813 shrugged. “Half an hour after we blow it up, they’ll be back.”

  “Yeah, but in the reality of our timeline, we’ll have blown them up.” Nighthawk glanced at Rallek. “I wanna board. Besides, buttload of XP from that other quest.”

  Fawkes flicked her hair back over her shoulder. While she saw the point of efficiency, she also often cried when characters in movies or books died. Pixels or not, if they blew the ship up with slaves on board, she’d be glum thinking about how sad it would be to get kidnapped, sold into slavery, and die while unconscious in a stasis pod, never knowing what hit her. A black cloud would hound her over it for days. “Yeah. We board. Besides, I got a new drop earlier I wanna try out.”

  Nighthawk looked at her. “Why are you giving orders? Kavan’s the captain.”

  “I’m inclined to agree with her. Besides.” Kavan gestured at her. “I can’t argue with that wide-eyed innocent face.”

  Fawkes flipped him off.

  Kavan laughed.

  “Ooo. New weapon finally? What’d ya get?” asked Nighthawk.

  She held up the laser. “CL32.”

  “Badass. Almost as good as mine.” He grinned.

  Fawkes inspected him, her attention going straight to the equipped-weapon box. He had a pair of identical Raven Model 5s, level 44 blue laser pistols with a damage range of 175-262, both giving a +5% bonus to critical hit chance, and a +2 to the dexterity stat. “Damn, where did you get those things?”

  “Gunslinger class quest at level forty-three. Spent most of the afternoon working on it.”

  “Every ’slinger from level forty-three to their early fifties carries those things.” Rallek shrugged. “Unless they get a lucky purple drop on a group quest.”

  “Oh.” She smirked. “So the game basically just hands them to you.”

  “Well he is a gunslinger.” Rallek poked her in the arm. “Wouldn’t be very useful without decent weapons. That’s the whole point of his class.”

  “Okay, so we board.” Kavan thumped his fist on the table like a gavel. “Everyone cool with us taking off now?” When no one raised an objection, he stood. “I’ve already got the jump plotted. It’s about ten minutes to fly there.”

  Fawkes stood. “I’ll go preload some ship buffs.”

  “I wanna tinker with the Gremlin,” said Nighthawk. “Read about a new spec. If I shift a couple points out of Reactive Shields to Overcharge, I should be able to blitz down even a bomber-class fighter in one volley.”

  Kavan raised both eyebrows. “True, the cooldown from Overcharge could do that, but is it worth having no shields up for twenty seconds? You’d make a debris cloud out of one bad guy, but if he has friends, you’re toast.”

  “They’d still have to hit me first.” Nighthawk struck a heroic pose. “Besides… I’m not that stupid. I wouldn’t use it when I had someone on my butt.”

  “You know…” Rallek tapped a finger on his chin, smiling. “If you swung close enough to the Stormbringer for a moment, I could hit you with Symbiosis…”

  “What’s that?” asked Nighthawk, looking back and forth between Rallek and Kavan.

  “A spell,” said Rallek.

  “Duh. Obvs.” Nighthawk sighed. “What’s it do?”

  “It lets you use your primary class special abilities for thirty seconds with a ship… or other vehicle.” Rallek winked.

  Nighthawk’s expression hardened with deep thought, but Kavan whistled right away.

  “That’s a hell of a combination,” said Kavan.

  “What?” Nighthawk stared at him.

  Kavan smiled. “You just got that Showdown ability, right? Thirty seconds where you don’t even have to maneuver. Just hang there and shoot.”

  Showdown let a gunslinger stand in the middle of the open like something out of a cheesy western movie. As Nighthawk realized the implication of that talent affecting his Gremlin fighter, he broke into a massive grin.

  “It also lets Kavan’s Dig In ability work on the big ship,” said Rallek with a raised finger.

  Everyone let out an awestruck whistle, even Fawkes. Dig In temporarily tripled a tank’s health points to give healers a chance to catch up during damage spikes.

  “Okay, maybe I don’t think magic is that silly anymore.” Fawkes winked at Rallek.

  Still grinning from ear to ear, Nighthawk got up and jogged off to the access hatch for the fighter bay.

  Kavan headed for the bridge. Fawkes grabbed Rallek’s ass and squeezed. He spun into an embrace, kissed her for a moment, and leaned back to smile. She teased a finger at the shock of bright violet in his otherwise jet-black hair.

  “If I’d known you were in this kinda mood I would’ve stopped by in person.” He nodded toward the bunkrooms. “We got a couple minutes…”

  Fawkes shifted her weight from one leg to the other. “I’d prefer to do that in a world where my underwear isn’t glued on.”

  He laughed.

  Players could remove all clothing except for the standard drab underpants, and in the case of female characters, sports bra. Of course, the modding community reacted to this atrocity by releasing no less than forty-seven nude patches within hours of the game’s release, though she hadn’t bothered installing one. If she wanted to get off, she’d invite Eric over for real… or take matters into her own hands. Considering the staggering amount of porn on the net, why people would bother modifying a game boggled her mind. A person could find skin anywhere online, but here, you could blow shit up with lasers.

  She kissed him again before jogging off to the engineering room. Between her level and the Stormbringer’s displacement (corvette), she had four ‘buff slots’ that would hold pre-made boosts. Whatever she put in there, Kavan could access as the pilot. During a space battle, she could use her tools to tweak at the various components in this room, the engineer’s way of participating in combat.

  “Hey Kavan,” said Fawkes. “Do you know what kind of loadout the Scarlet Saber is packing? Are we looking at lasers, particle beams, neutron beams, or mass drivers?”

  “Four heavy neutron beams and EMF torpedoes,” said Rallek over the comm link. He let the game use his real voice, so hearing Eric distracted her into thinking about quiet time with him in the real world. “They’re pirates, so they want to disable ships without tearing them apart.”

  “You know this or you’re guessing?” asked Angel813.

  “Read up on the mission last week when we got it,” said Rallek.

  “Research? She don’t know what that means.” Kavan’s voice carried a hint of chuckle.

  Rallek groaned. “I hope she starts reading strats when we get to raid content.”

  “Lay off her,” said Fawkes. “She’s super busy in the real world. Besides… Eric’s got all the strats memorized already. He can tell her whatever she needs to know.”

  “Lazy,” muttered Nighthawk.

  “I don’t need to read the strats,” said Angel813. “Nine times out of ten, my job is going to be standing there spamming heals. You guys have to worry about running the encounter.”

  “True enough, but sometimes they make the healers jump through hoops, too,” said Rallek.

  Fawkes slotted two ‘polarity reversal’ buffs, which would make the shields temporarily resistant to neutron beams at the expense of becoming worthless against any other attack. Neutron beams functioned on spaceships like stun rays on people. They’d knock stuff offline and cripple a ship without doing permanent damage―perfect for a pirate. They also tended to do quite a bit more ‘damage’ per shot than other weapons, since their effects were temporary. In the third slot, she put a countermeasure that let the communications suite broadcast chaos to confuse incoming torpedoes.
The Stormbringer had normal countermeasures, but her buff version had a 100% chance to work, making the ship immune to guided missiles for sixty seconds. The fourth slot got the usual, a Recharge ability that ‘healed’ the ship’s shields for half of their normal maximum value. She adored that one since it had saved them from being blown up quite a few times.

  That done, she grabbed a giant yellow screwdriver and poked it at the engine component. A momentary surge of acceleration made her lean a bit to the side. “Let me know when you’re about to engage. Giving us a twenty percent speed boost until then.”

  “Copy that,” said Kavan.

  “How much longer until you can unlock Arcane Bridge?” asked Rallek. He’d been nagging her about that ability for days. With it, she could double the range of his technomancy spells in space.

  “That’s a level forty slot. Two levels away.”

  “Oh, hey, grats on thirty-eight.”

  “Thanks,” she muttered.

  She rattled around the engineering bay while the ship flew toward the quest destination. A few minutes later, a bright flash announced the warp jump and brought on a full-body sensation of pins and needles. Fawkes shrieked and swatted at herself. Rallek gasped over the comm link, as did Kavan and Nighthawk.

  “Whoa, that was weird,” said Nighthawk.

  “My balls are tingling,” said Rallek.

  Nighthawk laughed.

  “Must you?” asked Kavan.

  “What?” Rallek’s portrait on the comm panel shrugged. “They are.”

  Kavan grumbled.

  “It must be some ‘special effect’ for jumping. These new helmets are something else, all right. Do they do anything good?” muttered Fawkes. “What do you think, Angel?”