by Alex Knight
The rings were glowing and humming now, bathing Kaiden and Titus in soft white light that scanned back and forth over their bodies. With each second he spent under the light, Kaiden watched his health replenish. Normally, health in Nova recovered slowly over time when out of combat, or could be regenerated via a stimpack or a medic. The medbay was a mid-to-late-game unlock that provided any ship of adequate ability to serve as something of a mobile clinic. No one had used the medbay yet, but now, wrapped in its healing embrace, Kaiden was thankful Zelda’d had the foresight to acquire the upgrade back when they’d been on Bernstein’s scavenger hunt.
Kaiden was distracted as a big notification appeared in his vision.
**Full System Alert! Full System Alert!**
This is a Warden Corps All-Frequencies Broadcast. The Warden Corps is seeking the following fugitives currently believed to be in-game:
Player name: Kaiden
Player name: Zelda
Player name: Titus
Player name: Thorne
A bounty of 1,500,000 credits will be awarded to any player who provides information leading to the fugitives’ capture. An additional bounty of 700,000 credits will be awarded to any player who engages or delays the fugitives until a warden is able to Shackle them.
“Another one,” he said, seeing everyone else’s eyes go distant as they read the broadcast. “Apparently Werner isn’t happy about our escape.”
“So he was back, and on a different account? And a much stronger one, from the sound of it,” Thorne said. She cleared the top of a table, pushing the various medical supplies off to one side, then sat down on it, her expression a mixture of pondering and worried.
“Werner can’t stand Nova. For the short time I worked with him, he made it very clear the real world is the only place worth bothering with. If he’s in-game, it’s because he was ordered to be, and that’s telling.”
“Telling how?” Kaiden asked, trying to meet her eye but having to duck away as the white light scanned up his face and blinded him for a moment.
“It means the Party, and Moran specifically, are seriously concerned. They’re redirecting real-world resources into Nova. Pulling Werner off the streets? Forcing people to power-level accounts for him and the rest of Moran’s thugs?” She shook her head. “They’re feeling the heat. Can’t find us in the real world—”
“Shoutout to trusty ol’ swamp bunker,” Titus added. “You’re mildewy and smell a bit weird, but you’re doing a great job keeping us alive.”
“–so they’re focusing all of their attention on Nova,” Thorne finished, smiling a bit at Titus’ spur-of-the-moment ode to the swamp bunker.
“Careful,” Zelda said, giving Titus a look. “The less Ellenton knows of where we are, the better.”
“Look at this ship!” Ellenton slammed into the other side of the medbay window. It looked in from the hallway where she’d been running back and forth, scouring every inch of the Veritas II. “This thing is incredible!” Her expression was one of unbridled joy, eyes wide and smile wider, though maybe that was just the way she was pressing her face up against the glass. “How did you keep this thing to yourselves all this time? I mean, the Borrelly’s my baby and always will be, but this ship is freaking magnificent.”
Kaiden began to reply, but she’d already peeled her face off the window and disappeared out of sight toward the engine room.
“That’s more like it,” Titus said as a pleasant ding sounded and the rings around his med station opened and retracted. “Good as new.” He stood and stretched.
Kaiden’s own station dinged as well. He confirmed his health was back to one hundred percent, then stood and shook his arms out. Being in a game meant his body didn’t actually feel tired or sore, but his mind expected it to, and some mannerisms were hard to forget.
“Now that that’s done, back to the matter at hand,” Thorne said, drawing everyone’s attention back to her. “Werner being in-game means the Party is feeling the heat. They want to get that database back ASAP.”
“And Marty confirmed The Syndicate exists,” Kaiden said. “The turen told you guys pretty much the same, just labeled with a different name.”
“The Pansophists,” Zelda said with a nod.
“I like your theory, though.” Kaiden began to pace. Always helped him think better. “The Syndicate, or the Pansophists, or whatever, have to be a group of players, right? I mean, it just makes sense. It’s… how’d you put it, Thorne?”
“Like a big, secret guild of players,” she said. “Just taken to the next level. A guild where you have to be powerful just to join. Lead a guild of your own, or own a solar system. You know, real power. Well, real fake power. But real power in-game.”
“There’s no difference,” Zelda said. “Real power, fake power? It doesn’t matter. Every advantage we can gain in-game gets us one step closer to the All-Frequencies Broadcast System which, coupled with Bernstein’s in-game database, can bring down the Party. That’s real power. Some may say being important in Nova doesn’t mean anything in the real world, but right now, it might just mean everything.” She looked around the room. “We need allies. Powerful allies, so we can make a real difference in the world.”
It’s a good point. Maybe in the past Nova was just a game, but now? Well, now it just might overthrow a government. Might make a better world for everyone.
“We need allies...” Kaiden said, working his way through things as he spoke. “But Maximus is a dead end. Odditor has unreasonable demands. And The Syndicate, well, we don’t even know where to find them.” He stopped pacing abruptly. “But what if we already found one of them?”
Thorne made a show of looking around dramatically.
“It’s not any one of us, so unless you’re accusing Acton of secretly being part of some shadowy, might-not-actually-exist organization of gods, who are you talking about?”
“PlayaSlaya,” Kaiden said. “Leader of the biggest PVP guild in-game. Everyone knows his name and he’s one of the strongest players in Nova.”
“Things didn’t exactly go so well the last time we tried this route,” Thorne said. “I mean, Titus almost got…”
Kaiden cringed, preparing for Titus’ anger at the memory.
“Maximus turned us away because they’re a bunch of PVP-obsessed punks,” Titus said, and there was no anger in his voice. Or, at least, far less than Kaiden had suspected. If anything, the big man sounded like he was thinking through a plan. “But they also turned us away because we were too low-level, right?”
“Being max level is important for PVP,” Thorne said with a shrug.
“We don’t need max level,” Titus said, the beginnings of a smirk pulling at his lips. “We just need level fifty.”
“Why’s that?”
“Those punks we met on Kyraxis, they said Maximus run PVP tournaments, right?” Titus was full on smiling now. “I’ve been thinking about this since. Didn’t think it was the right time – we were going to meet Odditor, then look into The Syndicate – but now, well, no better time than the present. If we hit level fifty, we can all enter in Maximus’ PVP tournament.”
“Okay…” Thorne said, apparently still not following.
“If one of us can win that tournament, we’ll have earned a meeting, or at least a conversation with PlayaSlaya. And if we think there’s even the slightest chance that he’s in The Syndicate – assuming it does exist – then we need to talk to him.”
“You sure this isn’t about getting back at those jerks?” Zelda asked.
“Never said it wasn’t,” Titus said and cracked his knuckles. A moment later, he shrugged. “But two birds with one stone, yeah? Whether The Syndicate does or doesn’t exist, we still want PlayaSlaya on our side.”
“Can’t say I fault the logic,” Kaiden said, mulling over Titus’ point. Sure, he likely wanted to go back and kick Nassus’ ass, but there was more to it than that. Nothing they learned about The Syndicate had changed the fact that they needed PlayaSlaya as an
ally if they were going to take on Warden HQ. Uncovering The Syndicate could help them if they managed it, but so would completing Odditor’s labyrinth and winning his support. And so would finding themselves a massive army. And unlimited funds. And a dozen other things. Kaiden shook his head at the monumental tasks ahead of them.
“We might be trying to do too much at once,” he said to the group. “There’s a ton of stuff we have to accomplish before we go after Warden HQ. The simple fact of the matter is that we want PlayaSlaya or Odditor by our side. Preferably both. What else we might need we still don’t know, but those two we’re set on. So, let’s focus on them.” He looked to Titus. “I like the tournament idea. That’s a surefire way to PlayaSlaya if we can win.”
“Maximus’ tournament makes sense,” Zelda said, hand on her chin, clearly thinking it over. She nodded. “That... that might be something. Maybe we can get a one-on-one with PlayaSlaya. Tell him about the database, feel him out as an ally. But you’re forgetting something, Kai.” She looked right at him. “Odditor demanded ante. The only way we were going to get a crack at his labyrinth was if we staked the database to do it. That’s not a risk we can take.”
“That’s what he said, but there must be something else he would want. Something of value we can stake. Hell, we’ll fake the database if we need to. Well, probably that’s not the best way to kick off a relationship with a potential ally, but what I’m trying to say is, other people run his labyrinth. They obviously stake things less valuable than Bernstein’s database. There have to be things Odditor is willing to accept as ante instead of the database. We just have to find out what.”
“I don’t think…” Zelda paused. “Well, maybe?” She shook her head as if shaking off the thought. “I’m not sold on that being the case.”
“But it is possible, right?” Kaiden said, waving his hand for her to agree.
Come on, think creative here. Be a bit adventurous.
She sighed.
“It’s possible. Sure.”
“Then let’s at least think on it. See if we can’t come up with something Odditor would accept. And, in the meantime,” he turned to Titus. “We can take down Maximus’ tournament.”
“It’s not a bad plan,” Thorne said, nodding to herself. “A bit crazy, and a bit of a stretch in a few – okay, a lot – of places. But... there might be something to this.”
Kaiden smiled at that. Smiled because maybe everything wasn’t set in stone, maybe nothing was certain, but what did that matter? If in the past they’d only reached for things that were certain, they’d never have made it this far.
“Sometimes it just takes a little faith, guys,” Kaiden said. “And maybe a little luck. But we can make this work.”
“A little faith, a little luck, and a whole lot of grinding,” Zelda said. “If we’re going to hit level fifty, which we have to in order to even qualify for Maximus’ tournament.”
“Actually,” Thorne said, her voice unsure at first. “I’ve been thinking about that. I need ten levels to hit fifty. You all are at level thirty-eight, so you need twelve. That’s a fair few, but not all that much. I... I might have a solution.”
“Oh?” Kaiden perked up at that. “But I was just about to give a pep talk about how we needed to start dedicating like twenty hours a day to mindless grinding. About how it was going to be hell, but we were going to pull together and fight through!” He shrugged. “It was going to be very rousing.”
His humor was apparently lost on Thorne. Or she was too distracted to notice it. She was looking off into space, mouth slightly open. Finally, she nodded to herself.
“This might just work.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Location Discovered: Langrangia
Faction: None
“Uh, are those orbital turrets going to be a problem?” Kaiden asked, pulling his eyes from the planet below them and to the massive Warden Corps turrets. Even as he asked, they must have picked up the Borrelly on their scanners. They came to life all at once, massive guns turning to lock on to the ship.
Remind me why we came here in the shuttle and not the Veritas II?
“Open a channel with them?” Thorne asked. Ellenton did so and Thorne leaned forward, peering out of the windshield of the Borrelly and toward the nearest turret. “Time to get to work,” she said, speaking slowly and enunciating clearly into the microphone.
“Access granted,” a robotic voice said through comms, and all at once, the turrets deactivated.
“That was… easy,” Kaiden said, marveling at the sheer size of the closest turret as Ellenton guided them past and down into the planet’s atmosphere.
“Only a handful of wardens know that password. Once those turrets activated, we had five seconds before they blew us to shrapnel. Must’ve told command a hundred times that we needed to change the password on the turrets at least monthly.” Thorne shrugged. “Guess I’m glad they didn’t listen to me. Still, let’s keep our signature as small as possible.” She looked to Ellenton. “Cut power to everything but emergency systems. Only use as much thrust as necessary, too. No reason to spike our infrared.”
“Woman, I know what I’m about,” Ellenton shot back, sounding only half joking. “But it looks like your suspicion was correct,” she added as they broke through the cloudy skies of the planet and eased down toward what looked to be a barren surface. “I’m picking up at least a hundred player signatures down there.”
Thorne smirked at that.
“Hold up,” Kaiden said, not believing what he was hearing. “Can we backtrack a bit? Why does this planet – home to nothing but a backwater Warden Corps outpost – have an orbital defense system? More importantly, why are there ‘hundreds of players’ down there?” He peered down to the rapidly approaching surface. It was totally empty.
“Land at the emergency exit,” Thorne said, pointing to the bottom of a small impact crater. It was surrounded on all sides by more of the same barren landscape. It might have been molten once, but now it was solidified and desolate. The was no movement, no ships, not even a single mob.
Ellenton huffed by way of response, but eased the shuttle gently on to the surface then cut the engines the moment they were down.
“Excuse me,” Zelda said, pushing into the cockpit. “What are we doing here? You still haven’t explained anything.”
Kaiden stepped next to her and nodded. “Seriously. Where are we and why are we here?”
Thorne looked at them both with a touch of confusion in her eyes.
“Sometimes I forget how short a time you spent as wardens. You’d have learned about this place if you’d stayed longer, but circumstances being what they were…” She waved away the thought. “Anyway, no time to waste. Follow me and I’ll explain on the way in.”
“The way in to where?” Titus asked from where he was standing by the now-open rear ramp. “There’s nothing here.”
“Oh, you just don’t know where to look,” Thorne said, patting him on the shoulder as she passed, then strode down the ramp.
Kaiden followed her at a jog.
“Talk to me, Thorne. Where are we?”
For all intents and purposes, it looks like we’re in the middle of nowhere. We didn’t even land next to the warden outpost on the planet.
Thorne pointed ahead and Kaiden found himself staring up at the wall of the impact crater, rising several hundred paces into the sky. Except there was something at the base of the wall. It was covered in a layer of ashen dust, but still, it reflected a bit of light.
“Langrangia is just a nowhere backwater,” Thorne said as she approached the metal wall. But no, not a wall. A door. “Or that’s what the Warden Corps wants everyone to believe.” She stretched out and touched the tip of her hammer to the door with quiet dink. Light poured out from a pinhole on the door and scanned her hammer. It went over it once, top to bottom, then once more, and switched off. There was a hiss of compressed air, then a puff of ash, and the door opened.
“When we found We
rner on that station, he mentioned the Warden Corps was power-leveling accounts, right?” Thorne asked, peering into the dark hallway beyond the door. “He shouldn’t have said that.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Kaiden asked.
“Because this is where they’re doing it.” Thorne stepped into the hallway then waved them after her. “Follow me and keep close.”
“Wait a minute,” Zelda said, refusing to step past the door. “You mean to tell me those hundred player signatures Ellenton saw were all wardens?”
Oh, shit. Kaiden stopped mid-step, standing in the doorway next to Zelda but going no further.
“They sure were,” Thorne said. “But they’re busy power-leveling, like I said. With any luck we’re going to slip past them unnoticed.”
“And do what?” Kaiden asked.
Thorne nodded at him.
“Take another step. Just one more.”
He hesitated – what was she on about? – but stepped forward and into the hallway.
Location Discovered: The Grinder
Faction: Warden Corps
“What the hell is ‘The Grinder?’” he asked, reading the name aloud.
“The Grinder is the Warden Corps’ power-leveling facility,” Thorne explained. “And it’s how we’re going to get the levels we need to enter Maximus’ tournament.” She walked further down the hallway, forcing them to follow.
“The Warden Corps has a power-leveling facility?” Kaiden asked, taking in his surroundings as he followed Thorne. The hallway was unremarkable, rough-hewn walls cut from the natural black stone of the planet. Ahead, though, Kaiden thought he could see an intersection with another hallway, and that one better lit.
“This Grinder’s only supposed to be used on special occasions,” Thorne said through comms. “Mainly because of how many resources it takes to maintain it.” A door appeared, jutting out of the rock wall on their right. Thorne pointed at it but kept walking.
