Axillon99

by Matthew S. Cox

  Fawkes smiled. “Let’s hope.”

  A Rip in the Veil

  21

  The crew explored the massive, derelict factory for over an hour, checking every room along the interior. Rusting hallways, broken pipes, and a general sense of malaise got the hairs on the back of her neck on end. A flavor like brackish water and rust settled on her tongue. Every so often, packs of small robots attacked, but they landed firmly in the ‘irritating’ category, being no real danger. Still, the constant threat of another attack kept the level of tension high enough to get Fawkes jumping at shadows.

  “You know,” she muttered, “I’ve never been a fan of watching horror movies. I don’t like being in one.”

  Soft chuckling echoed behind her from everyone else.

  “Yeah,” said Nighthawk in an unusually quiet voice. “I hate stuff that jumps out, too.”

  She nudged open a door that led to a command type room full of computers. A huge wall of screens stood in front of an array of workstations. “Oh, hey this looks promising.”

  Fawkes strolled down a short staircase, heading for the center of the room. She flopped in the most important looking chair and attacked the computer terminal. It turned on, displaying a log entry with cryptic notes about the warp drive.

  “The QDD-1 has exhibited poor performance when used for short-distance leaps of less than a hundred nav units. However, when operating in blue-star systems, we’ve noticed an inversion in the energy transfer that results in a successful jump and a net increase in stored power. Our monitoring stations detected that this phenomenon leaves behind an energy trace for up to twenty-four days that is vulnerable to being detected by standard sensor arrays if the operators scan for a particular wavelength. Before the QDD-1 can be certified for military use, we’ll have to fix this issue. For the type of service this ship is intended, leaving behind any sign of presence is unacceptable.”

  Glowing text―Log Updated―appeared in midair and faded.

  Fawkes opened her mission log. The prize quest lit up with a new entry. She tapped it.

  “Your ship’s sensors have been updated with the information you found in the research facility. Sensor sweeps can now detect the energy trace left behind by the Reckoning’s warp drive and record its location.” Fawkes looked up from her personal display screen. “So… we can see where this ship has been now?”

  “Hmm.” Kavan rubbed his chin. “I’m guessing that they expect us to fly all over and look for these traces. Maybe it’ll let us follow the ship?”

  Rallek walked around to stand beside him. “How do you follow a ship that blips from one side of the universe to another in an instant?”

  “There’s gotta be a pattern in there somewhere.” Fawkes tapped her foot for a moment in thought. “Maybe we can extrapolate where it’s going to go before it goes somewhere?”

  Angel813 sputtered. “Who is supposed to win this prize, the NSA?”

  Kavan and Rallek laughed.

  “Maybe you’re overthinking it?” asked Nighthawk.

  A faint metallic glint caught Fawkes’ eye. She twisted the chair around with a low creak, squinting at a shelf of dusty equipment along the wall at her left.

  “What?” asked Rallek.

  “I thought I saw something.” She kept staring at the spot. When the flash happened again, she darted out of the chair and ran to it. Under a heap of keyboards, computer components, and a broken flat-panel monitor, she found a data pad. “Aha! Don’t anyone ever tell me throwing a couple points in perception was a waste.”

  “What is it?” asked Nighthawk.

  “A data pad,” said Fawkes.

  “Duh. Obviously.” Nighthawk rolled his eyes. “What’s on it?”

  She tapped the button, activating the display.

  Text appeared in bright cyan on a blue holographic screen:

  Fuck me? No. Fuck you. S08agtHRbt! -TURBAN

  BB842.32 HF222.20

  Fawkes ran her finger back and forth under the S08 part. “This kinda looks like a password.”

  “Who the heck is TURBAN?” Nighthawk scratched his head.

  She shifted her jaw side to side.

  Angel813 shrugged. “One of the head developers is Indian, but I don’t think he’s a Sikh.”

  Rallek snapped his fingers. “No! It’s not TURBAN… It’s T. Urban!”

  “What?” asked Kavan. “Give an old man a break here.”

  Rallek grabbed Fawkes’ head in two hands and pulled her into a brief kiss. “Keep on putting points in perception.”

  “Less kissy more info-y,” said Kavan.

  “Heh.” Rallek pointed at the data pad. “Okay, CSI started off real small, with three main guys, the founders. Vinod Prakash, Gerald Barker, and Thomas Urban.”

  “I’ve heard of the first two…” Nighthawk scrunched up his eyebrows. “Not the other guy.”

  “Right.” Fawkes’s eyes shot open wide with realization. “Urban left the company right before Axillon99 exploded into the most popular game in the world.”

  “Rumor had it he got fucked,” said Rallek.

  Nighthawk cackled.

  Kavan winced.

  “Uhh, sorry.” Rallek flashed a cheesy smile. “All sorts of rumors say Urban got the shaft.”

  “Look at this.” Fawkes pointed at the data pad. “F me, no F you? That’s gotta be from Urban. This could be his revenge. Hang on. I have to try something.”

  She flung herself back into the computer chair and forced the terminal to a login prompt. The game world’s fictional Portals14 operating system screen appeared. She entered TURBAN as the username and ‘S08agtHRbt!’ for a password. A spinning icon appeared.

  “Did it work?” asked Rallek.

  “It’s still thinking about it.” Fawkes raised an eyebrow. “But it’s doing something. A bad password would’ve rejected by now unless it’s got no connection to the domain controller.”

  “What?” asked Nighthawk.

  “Oh, I keep thinking this is real life.” Fawkes groaned and ran her hands up over her hot pink hair. “Come on, girl. Hold it together. Pink hair and background music means game world.”

  “Invalid Username” appeared on the screen.

  “Damn.” Fawkes muttered. “Was worth a try.”

  “Maybe that other thing is the password?” asked Angel813.

  “No, that’s coordinates.” Nighthawk pointed at the numbers.

  Fawkes’ hands trembled. “Wait a sec. This could be a back door login. This terminal is still fully in game. It wouldn’t take a real login. This could be Urban’s actual network credentials for the CSI network.”

  “Whoa.” Rallek leaned back. “So this is or is not related to the big mission?”

  She flicked a thumbnail at the edge of the data pad, in a repetitious clicking motion for a moment of thought. “I don’t think it’s intentionally related, but maybe the ‘no F you’ part of this is him helping someone get that money. We should check out what’s on the other end of that rainbow.” She pointed at the coordinates. “But, as far as the mission goes, finding this terminal and getting the sensor unlock I think was it.”

  “So, we had to fight that obnoxious robot only to get our sensors able to sniff out this ship we have no chance in hell of taking on?” asked Kavan.

  “Yeah, something like that.” Fawkes grinned.

  Kavan frowned.

  “Wait… the pirates!” Nighthawk held up a finger. “We snuck in and out of a raid doing this quest and didn’t have to fight it. Maybe we don’t have to kill the Reckoning. Finding it at all might be enough. Something might happen, like a transmission as soon as we’re close.”

  “Oh.” Kavan’s eyebrows both went up. “That’s possible.”

  “Don’t give up yet, old man.” Angel813 punched him playfully in the shoulder. She had a flirty look to her eye that he seemed oblivious to. A few seconds later, she turned away, disappointed.

  Fawkes glanced between them, debating if she should tell Kavan, but she chickened
out.

  Back on the Stormbringer, and well away from leading any other prize-seekers to the abandoned factory, the crew convened in the main room with an overabundance of fattening treats. Fawkes did things with her tongue to a portion of chocolate mousse that would’ve resulted in prison time in some countries. Rallek printed an unhealthy amount of hot wings while Nighthawk went for the usual: chicken nuggets and fries. Angel813 introduced everyone to daifuku, flavored filling wrapped in a gummy, sugary shell made from pounded rice.

  “Got it,” said Nighthawk. “Those coordinates point to DB224. It’s a desolate planet with no natural water.”

  “Random?” asked Fawkes.

  “Again, the name looks random but if Tom Urban is sending us there… Maybe it’s not as random as it appears.” Rallek inhaled another wing. “You know this game is ruining me for food. These wings taste just like the ones I used to get back home before I moved to NYC. So perfect.”

  “Mmm,” said Nighthawk. “It does the fries awesome, too. They taste like just the ones from sc― I mean the ones I used to get at school years ago.”

  Fawkes glanced over the table at him.

  “So this planet…” Rallek nibbled on a wing while glancing at a floating display screen. “It’s got a few lame quests. There’s some comments about it having overpowered creatures that aren’t worth the experience rewards. People are pretty much all saying don’t bother going here.”

  “Iceland,” said Kavan.

  “Whoa left field.” Fawkes stared at him. “What?”

  “Greenland and Iceland.” Kavan smiled. “Greenland is an icy wasteland. Iceland is paradise. The people who discovered them named them backwards to keep Iceland for themselves. Maybe it’s a similar thing. Urban made the planet unappealing so people wouldn’t want to go there―to hide something.”

  “Well…” Fawkes waved the data pad. “It’s not like we’re going there looking for quests. We have something amazing.”

  “Are you sure it’s not a trick?” asked Angel813.

  She turned the data pad over in her fingers. “I think it’s legit. At worst, it’s an Easter egg. At best, who knows? Maybe the cash.”

  “Might as well check it out. It’s either that or we fly around at random hunting for sensor traces.” Kavan stood. “Gimme those coordinates again.”

  Fawkes tossed the data pad to him.

  Friendly Rivalry

  22

  Thin white lines on the viewscreen reduced to individual stars, and the brown sphere hurtling toward them at a terrifying pace stopped cold as the Stormbringer dropped out of warp in DB224’s star system. The planet, which had been approaching like a cannonball, hung motionless, occupying the middle third of the main viewscreen. Faint striations of beige rolled across the surface beneath a wispy gauze of cloud cover along with a few darker bands.

  The crew gathered on the bridge, crowded together behind the pilot’s seat.

  Bit by bit, the unimpressive brown sphere eked larger.

  “Wow. If boring had a color, it would be that,” said Kavan.

  Fawkes’ account pinged. She opened the interface and nearly passed out at the new message counter showing 28,417 unread. “Oh, shit. Is everyone getting spammed or is it just me.”

  “Crap,” said Rallek, staring at a floating window. “What the hell?”

  “Oh, wow.” Nighthawk whistled. “Thirty thousand messages.”

  For a second, Fawkes felt a twinge of disappointment at ‘the damn gunslinger’ getting a higher score, but when she looked back down at the little display screen her count had gone up to 32,044.

  “It’s people begging for information,” said Angel813. “Oh, and about one in ten feel the need to tell me I’m not really a woman.”

  Biting her lip, Fawkes checked a couple of the first messages. A few offered congrats, most begged for a clue, some cursed her out, and a couple accused her of really being a dude. “Yeah, same here. I wonder if anyone’s accused Nighthawk of really being a man yet.”

  He held up a middle finger.

  Rallek laughed. “Watch, he’s really a chick playing a dude.”

  “Am not,” said Nighthawk.

  “So why the sudden barrage?” Kavan swiveled the pilot’s chair around to look at everyone.

  “Because of this.” Rallek grabbed a display screen like a floating piece of paper, stretching it wider and turning it around to show everyone the leaderboard.

  1. The Stormbringer

  2. Grand Designs (Tied)

  3. Feral (Tied)

  “Dammit!” yelled Fawkes. “That’s not cool. They might as well paint a giant target on our asses.”

  Buzzing came from the console.

  “Crap. Someone did!” yelled Nighthawk, before running down the hall.

  The computer locked on to an approaching Cobra class corvette designated Elite, a broad flying wedge. It had about half the nose-to-tail length of the spearhead-shaped Stormbringer, but twice the width. Red lights indicated the other ship had armed its weapons.

  “Pirates?” yelled Fawkes.

  “No, not this close to a planet.”

  “Hello!” A twenty-ish looking guy with a black bowl cut streaked with bands of neon green appeared on the viewscreen. “Nothing personal. We’re just hoping to slow y’all down so we have a chance at the prize. Good luck!”

  The comm cut out.

  “Huh?” asked Fawkes. “The hell is that?”

  “If they blow us up, we’re stuck on a one-week lockout like we don’t have a starship. We’d be stranded on this dung ball doing missions on foot until the reset.” Kavan armed the weapons. “Mind giving us a hand back in engineering?”

  “I hate PVP!” yelled Fawkes.

  “Do you hate a lockout more?” Kavan swung the ship to the left and twisted around in a loop, sliding sideways in a corkscrew that kept the approaching idiot near the crosshairs in the middle of the screen.

  “This moron’s in a Cobra,” yelled Nighthawk. “That’s ‘baby’s first corvette.’ Don’t worry.”

  “Ugh!” She bolted down the hall, which lit up blue in the flare from the Stormbringer’s four laser cannons. Once she skidded to a stop by the engineering station, she slotted a shield booster out of reflex. “What are we dealing with?” she yelled at the comm panel.

  “Elite’s mounting a twin pulse laser and a molecular disruptor,” said Kavan from the console.

  Her mind raced. Pulse lasers did less damage than normal lasers, but fired rapidly, like a machinegun. If a pilot could keep them on target, they could do more damage in less time than the standard lasers. That varied a lot based on your target. With Kavan at the helm, and the agile Stormbringer, odds favored those being weak. Disruptors on the other hand did almost no damage to an active shield but they shredded armor. They also created a fairly slow-moving blob of energy, making them short range weapons since any decent pilot could dodge them given a long enough shot.

  “Disruptor’s going to do jack if our shields stay up. I think I’m just gonna load up four shield boosters.”

  “That works,” yelled Kavan.

  The brmmm, brmmm, brmmm of the ship’s guns going off over and over gave her some hope. If Kavan fired, that meant the Elite remained in front of them. The Stormbringer rattled as if it hit a patch of turbulence. Heavy thuds went overhead and some panels showed red. Shields dropped to ninety-two percent

  “Come on you bastard,” said Kavan, right before inertia pushed Fawkes into a slide away from her station. “Oh, he didn’t like that!”

  Kavan had to be turning damn hard.

  “What’s going on?” yelled Fawkes while scrambling into her seat and fastening the belt.

  “I don’t think he scanned us before deciding to attack. We’ve got Class 3 laser cannons. Four of them. This guy’s still on Class 1 weaponry. I bet he hasn’t had his ship for a full week yet. If I get a good shot on him three times, he’s gone. I hit him once, and now he’s all over the place like a bull with a flea chewing on its butt
hole.”

  Nighthawk cackled over the comm. “He probably crapped himself when he saw how much damage we did in one hit. Launching in three seconds.”

  “This guy thinks he’s all sorts of hot shit,” said Kavan, “because of his targeting unit.”

  “Predictive?” yelled Fawkes, as the Stormbringer took another barrage of pulse laser fire.

  “Yeah. If I fly erratically enough to avoid that thing, I’ll never get a shot off.”

  Rallek laughed like an evil mastermind. “Oh, boys! I got something for you.”

  All the lights in the engineering bay flickered.

  “What did you just do?” asked Fawkes.

  The air-blast noise of the Gremlin launching made her clamp her hands over her ears for a second.

  Rallek strolled in to the engineering bay. “Hit the Elite with a debuff. Almost no one remembers technomancers can affect ships in space battles. They’re thirty seconds without that predictive targeting module. He’s gotta aim by hand. Now it’s a pure twitch contest of who’s the better pilot.”

  “Nice.” She gave him a high five.

  The engineering station’s chase view screen flashed bright orange. Two streaks of particle beam came out from beneath the Stormbringer, strafing over the Elite and punching through its shield. A pair of black scorch marks appeared on the shiny hull. The Gremlin slipped out into view, accelerating at the Elite.

  “That damn fighter hits almost as hard as our ship’s main guns.” Rallek closed his eyes and put a hand on the engineering console. “Bet Nighthawk purchased his ship with real money too, only took a fighter craft instead of a corvette.”

  The same animation for the techno-bolts he’d been throwing at the giant robot appeared in space, flying out from the Stormbringer’s nose. It caught the tip of the Elite’s left side, leaving a patch of sparking blackness.

  “Right about now, I bet the pilot of that ship is thinking he made a tactical error,” said Rallek.

  “Or he’s a ‘worked-his-way-up’ guy cursing us out for having a purchased ship.” She shrugged.

  “Oh, this is only tier five… they go up to ten. And some of those ‘workers’ are already into the tier sevens.”