“You’re pacifists?” I asked.
The gnome cocked his head sideways as he contemplated his response.
“Something similar,” Borgym finally replied. “We aspire to create and do our best to avoid the path of destruction. I’m reluctant to force any of my people along a path we would usually abhor.”
“So how does a bunch of pacifists end up on a Dungeon World where they might have to fight for their lives?”
“Earth wasn’t supposed to be a Dungeon World,” Borgym said with a sigh. “It was supposed to be peacefully integrated into the System, and we booked passage in the hopes that we could be some of the first to get a foothold in manufacturing and development here.
“Since standard interplanetary travel takes weeks, we set out almost a month ago. Two days ago, when the Galactic Council changed the status of Earth to Dungeon World, we were too close to change course, and our charter insisted on following through his contract completely to land where we’d originally agreed. I believe you saw everything that happened when we landed, and the charter captain refused to renegotiate.”
“It was some impressive airtime.” I smirked at the thought of the gnome flying through the air.
Borgym narrowed his eyes, but the glare he leveled at me failed to dampen my amusement. His expression returned to normal as he continued. “When we found the airport here was practically empty, it was too lucrative to pass up. Since this is a Dungeon World, there will be a massive trade in loot being exported to crafters across the System, and that trade will need conventional transport. If we can be the first fully functional starport, then we’ll have a head start and be the natural default for most large-scale transport.”
“And to be fully functional, you need the terminal.”
It wasn’t a question, but Borgym nodded anyways.
“It sounds like you’ve already made up your mind,” I said.
The old gnome met my eyes firmly, no surrender in his expression. With a gesture from Borgym, a new update appeared for me.
Quest Update: Assist the Sprocketsworth clan with clearing the airport facilities.
Assist with clearing monsters from the airport terminal.
Reward: 20,000 Credits and 15,000 XP
That was simply too much of a reward for me to pass up. The reward alone would bump me up a Level, on top of whatever experience I gained from killing monsters along the way. Growing stronger would be another step forward on my path to finding out what had happened at the school.
I accepted the notification and looked at the clan leader. “You need to talk to your Architect, I need more ammo, and I wouldn’t mind some of those health potions if you have any to spare.”
Borgym pulled two of the red potions from his Inventory and handed them over, then he told me to talk to the guard at the main entrance for more projectile ammo. I worked my way back across the tiered platform and climbed down to the door before I retraced my steps through the building back to the main entrance.
The guard gave me a crate of projectile rounds like the one I had found beside me when I woke. Since all of my weapons and spare magazines were already filled, I stored the case in my Inventory.
Ipbar, Talli, and Alryn showed up shortly after I finished with the guard, and they clomped down the hall, already suited in their armor. The four of us left the building through the security doors, and the first set sealed behind us before the second set opened to the outside.
Once we were outside, we stepped away from the entrance, and the three suits turned toward me.
“What’s the plan, Hal?” Ipbar asked.
I considered the trio for a moment.
Talli’s suit shifted from side to side in a movement that looked nervous at first glance, but I could see the bright-haired gnome grinning through the cockpit canopy, and she looked more excited than anything else.
Ipbar’s armor stood still, though the way the gnome bit his lip belied the rest of his calm demeanor.
Only Alryn stared at me stoically, and the quiet gnome simply waited for me to respond.
“You’re looking at me to be in charge?” I countered finally.
“You’re the combat Class here,” said Talli. “We just have suits that fit and can put the tech to work.”
“Great,” I said. “You do realize I’ve only been doing this for, like, two days, right?”
The three just blinked at me in surprise.
“Yes, but you’re doing great!” Talli exclaimed.
I turned away from the overly optimistic gnomes and looked to the west across the tarmac. The airside terminal of the Pittsburgh International Airport consisted of four multilevel wings laid out in a mostly X-shape. The A and B Concourses of the two eastern-most wings had tips that angled straight east at the ends of the X.
While I contemplated the terminal building, several gnomes exited the headquarters building behind us and joined our group. I turned back to the others when I heard Borgym offer a greeting to Ipbar, Alryn, and Talli.
Then I started counting.
With the three armored suits, a full dozen gnomes stood gathered around the elder. Four of the new gnomes carried metallic cylinders that were almost larger than they were. A pair of the others carried gnome-sized rifles with a variety of attachments and tubes at the business end. The next couple carried staves with colored crystals at the top, one red and the other green.
“All right, here’s the plan,” said Borgym as he stepped forward and looked across the group, meeting each of our eyes solemnly. “We need to enter the terminal and clear any monster spawns we find. Our first pass through will be focused on removing as many monsters as possible. That’ll take some time. But once we’re done, we’ll go through the terminal once more. The second pass will require that we hold the area for our Architect, Ospyr, to use his Class Skill to stabilize the Mana flows in the terminal.”
Borgym continued. “Normally the Architect ability Structural Enfilade is used to expand the interior of System buildings beyond what their exterior dimensions would seem to hold. However, Ospyr is going to use it to channel Mana into the terminal. That should stabilize the Mana flows throughout the structure and keep the monsters in the building from respawning.”
Borgym grew even more serious. “While Ospyr is channeling, any monsters left within that section will be enraged by the disruption to their environment. They will attempt to attack the source of that disruption, so it’s critical that we clear out as many monsters as possible during our first trip through the terminal. Otherwise, you will have to defend Ospyr during his channeling process. It will take ten minutes of continuous channeling to stabilize each one-hundred-foot section of the terminal and any interruption means that he will need to start over.
“You all know why we chose to travel here. Even if we didn’t expect Earth to be a Dungeon World, we have been presented with a unique opportunity. The Clan is counting on all of you.”
The gathered gnomes seemed nervous, but their faces settled firmly in determination at his final words.
Borgym sensed the change in the group and nodded confidently. “Our new friend, Adventurer Mason, has agreed to assist us.”
The gnomes all looked at me, and I waved casually. Talli excitedly waved back, and I couldn’t help but grin at her antics.
A new notification appeared in my vision.
Borgym Sprocketsworth has invited you to join a party.
Accept: Y/N
I selected the affirmative option, and a new interface window showed up at the edge of my vision. Members of the party were listed in vertical blocks by name, with colored bars that displayed each individual’s health, mana, and stamina.
The new party menu was unobtrusive, somehow discernable in my peripheral vision without limiting my perception. When I focused on one of the names, that block within the window expanded slightly and provided a better look at their status bars.
Borgym nodded at my acceptance of the party invitation and gave me a moment to adjust to the new
interface before he led the group toward the nearest part of the terminal, the end of Concourse B.
There were numerous planes still parked at the terminal gates and a handful scattered along the runways, as if they had been in the process of taxiing between terminal and runway when the System came online and shut them down. All of the stranded planes out on the runways had their side hatches open with inflatable emergency slides deployed.
There were no signs of survivors, but a handful of bodies lay scattered around the tarmac, mostly closer to the terminal. Though some of them appeared to be fleeing passengers, the majority of the dead were clad in ground crew uniforms. The corpses we passed showed signs of scavengers in the way they were pecked apart, the lack of blood spatter indicating that the desecration had occurred postmortem.
When we reached the terminal, there were no obvious methods to access the building unless we wanted to go crawling through the network of conveyors in the bowels of the terminal that made up the airport baggage handling system.
I looked around for a moment, then up at one of the jet bridges that extended from the terminal before inspiration struck. I caught Borgym’s attention and gestured to one of the open jetways that sat empty near the end of the terminal. The gnome picked up on my intent and guided the party to the narrow set of stairs built into the base of the mobile tunnel.
Normally the stair was used by ground crew to retrieve last-minute checked bags from overbooked flights, but in this case, it made a perfect way for us to access the terminal.
I drew my energy pistol from a holster at my hip and led the way up the rickety stair. At the top, I found the door into the jetway unlocked, and I cautiously cracked the door open to peek inside. The only sounds were the gnomes behind me on the stair and the wind that whistled through the open end of the jetway, where passengers would normally have boarded their flight.
No threats appeared, so I slipped inside. I moved up the passage to give the gnomes room to follow, and they clambered up after me, soon filling the corridor. Once I was sure they had all made their way inside, I cautiously continued up the jetway until I reached the security door that led into the terminal itself.
With a final look behind me to ensure the rest of the party was prepared, I tested the security door. The door opened easily, since the magnetic locking system had failed with the power.
The first thing I noticed once I stepped through the door was a gentle breeze. The wind flowed through the terminal from broken windows that lined both sides of the terminal. Most of the tall windows had left behind shattered glass, which covered the floors and the rows of seats nearest those windows.
If not for that draft from the empty window frames, the overwhelming scent of death would have filled the concourse. Bodies lay scattered in pools of blood, most of the corpses savaged into pieces.
I didn’t see any immediate threats despite the dead, so I moved farther into the terminal. The gnomes followed, fanning out behind me as I moved slowly forward.
The concourse was eerily silent, which only made the charnel scene more disturbing.
I would almost have preferred the pre-System loudspeaker announcements that played on repeat about not leaving luggage unattended or reporting unattended baggage to the nearest Transportation Safety Administration personnel. I found the lack of such announcements especially ironic, since abandoned carry-ons and roller luggage now littered the concourse.
Food wrappers, drink bottles, and other discarded detritus lay discarded throughout the area.
After I’d moved up a couple dozen yards, I looked back at the group of gnomes who had spread out across the terminal behind me.
“This is good,” said one of the new gnomes, who carried one of the big metal cylinders.
I somehow heard the words the young gnome had spoken, but they hadn’t actually made any sound. I looked at him questioningly.
“Party chat,” explained Ipbar, who had apparently noticed my look of confusion. “Just focus on the party window as you speak and only your party will be able to hear you, or even be able to tell that you’ve been saying anything.”
“That seems pretty useful,” I said as I attempted to follow his instruction and apparently succeeded. “Especially for anything requiring stealth.”
Ipbar nodded.
While I had received an education on party chat, the gnome who had spoken, along with the other three carrying the large metallic cylinders, had moved to the four corners of the party. I watched as one placed the cylinder upright on the floor then slapped a hand down onto the top of the device before he stepped away.
Three legs folded down from the sides of the cylinder to stabilize it in a tripod position. The top split in two and slid around to create a half-moon shield as a barrel of a weapon raised from inside the cylinder and rotated down to rest on the level between the halves of the rounded shield. The automated turret pointed outward from the group, and the barrel of the weapon tracked smoothly from side to side as it searched for any threats.
All of the other gnomes had assembled inside the perimeter of a loose square, outlined by the four turrets. They clutched their weapons at the ready. Borgym stood at the center of the group and nodded at me once he saw that all the preparations had been completed.
I turned away from them and looked carefully down the length of the terminal before I stepped away from the perimeter the gnomes had set. I made it about twenty feet before a faint shriek echoed through the concourse.
I stopped, and the sound echoed again a moment later, this time louder and closer.
A winged blur streaked through one of the broken windows along the terminal, and the nearest turret behind me fired a beam at the fast-moving shape. The beam sizzled where it traced across the creature, and it shrieked loudly, the cry a louder match to the earlier distant screams, as the bird continued its flight.
I raised my right hand and cast Frostbolt at the darting beast. The shard of ice hit the bird and slowed it enough that I was able to follow up with Hinder just before it closed the distance. Despite slowing, the streak still slammed into my chest.
The impact barely staggered me, though talons punched through the armor plates on my chest, and I felt their sharpened tips dig into my flesh. I instinctively threw my arm in front of my face as the hawk’s beak snapped forward. I barely managed to block the lunge as I jerked backward, and the hooked beak ripped into my forearm.
With my left hand, I jammed my beam pistol into the bird’s chest along the underside of the wing and fired. A charred scent filled my nose as I held down the trigger, and the bird finally released its clawed grip on my chest and pushed off me.
It fluttered its wings to hover in front of me, but there was now enough space between us that the gnomes behind me could safely attack. Beam and projectile attacks passed narrowly on either side of me to slam into the hawk, and the creature tumbled to the floor. The hawk hopped right back up and spread its wings as it attempted to launch itself back into the air, giving me a good look at the whole creature.
Brown feathers covered the large bird, but it was the distinctive reddish tail feathers that identified it as a red-tailed hawk. Except that its four-foot wingspan was twice as large as a normal red-tailed hawk.
I joined in with more fire from my beam pistol as attacks poured into the hawk. It flapped its wings weakly for a moment then slumped to the floor.
Once it stopped moving, I stepped up beside the bloody raptor and looted it. I received a pair of red-tailed hawk talons, a handful of feathers, and some lightweight hawk bones. A notification informed me that similar items had been distributed to the other members of my party.
That was an interesting bit of information. It meant that only one person of an official party needed to loot something in order for the entire group to get their share.
I stood up from looting the corpse and resumed scouting ahead of the gnomes, still on the lookout for anything else that might aggress our group. Nothing else showed up as I crept forward anothe
r fifty feet. I moved slowly enough that I had healed back to full health by the time I paused again.
Two of the four gnomes who had activated the turrets initially reversed the process with the rear turrets before they scooped up the cylinders. Then they leapfrogged forward past the group and deployed the mobile weapons just behind where I waited.
We made it another one hundred feet without any monster encounters, the gnomes picking up and redeploying the turrets about every fifty feet. The group maintained a loose perimeter within the boundaries of the deployed turrets as I ranged out ahead of the group.
The cycle repeated itself twice more until we reached the point where the concourse angled forty-five degrees north, toward the central hub of the X-shaped terminal. This portion of the concourse was about three times as long as the section we had just cleared.
After another half hour, we had managed to move almost a third of the way through Concourse B with only intermittent monster attacks. The creatures had been easily put down, unlike the hawk we had encountered first. Almost all of them had been birds of some kind though, and I had the sense that this pseudo-dungeon was following an avian theme.
That theory was borne out almost as soon as I had finished the thought.
A hum filled the air as the two turrets were deployed once again. The noise grew slowly, pulsing louder then fading the slightest bit before ramping up again.
A writhing flock of birds poured through the windows on either side of us. They flowed in intricate patterns, swirling around each other to fill the entire width of the concourse. I recognized the mesmerizing aerobatics as a murmuration of starlings.
The turrets fired into the swarm, but there had to be hundreds of the creatures. No larger than my outspread hand, the birds were almost impossible to target individually. However, there were so many of the creatures that almost every shot hit something.
Fist Full of Credits: A New Apocalyptic LitRPG Series (System Apocalypse - Relentless Book 1) Page 17
