He takes a deep breath and then slowly releases. “Alright, one step at a time.”
I can’t tell if my words sink in or not, but I know if he keeps putting so much pressure on himself, eventually it will take its toll.
After checking our gear, we’re both out of plasma grenades. We have a few pulse grenades, but they only work on inanimate objects. Aside from my tattered body suit, the chest and back piece of my armor are holding up fine.
My helmet guides us up the stairwell, past two more floors of crew quarters. Above that is a mess hall and entertainment section. I’m almost tempted to check them out, but we don’t have time for side quests.
We stop in front of an exit where an echoing clank beats in rhythmic succession from the other side. Once we’re certain it’s not a threat, we head up several more levels and exit the stairwell into an enormous open bay filled with all-terrain vehicles.
Hundreds of vehicles are parked in neat lines, ranging from small one-man ATVs to tanks large enough to run down trees in a forest. There are motorcycles, trucks, and armored vehicles topped with plasma turrets. Almost anything an army would need for a land invasion.
Too bad there’s nothing that’s going to help us fight our way through the ship. Even if we took one of the motorbikes, we’ve had to weasel and wind enough that they wouldn’t last us long. What we need are more grenades.
“Is there anywhere we can replenish our plasma grenades on our current route?” I ask the helmet AI.
A room lights up green on the hologram. It’s a side room a few floors up along our current route so it’ll be an easy stop.
I close the hologram. “They’ve been the most useful item we’ve found so far. It makes sense to replenish them if we can.”
Dean nods. “I’d love to take one of these babies for a spin sometime.” He runs his hand along the side of a bulky tank with a flame thrower mounted to the front.
“Let’s try to beat this stage before we start thinking about joy-riding.”
We’re running between a row of ATVs when I spot something out of the corner of my eye that forces me to do a double-take. I stop running and Dean plows into my back, nearly knocking me over.
He instinctively raises his weapon in the direction I’m looking.
“What is it?” he whispers.
“Behind those trucks. What does that look like to you?”
His eyes go wide. “You’ve gotta be kidding me. Are those mech suits?”
We make our way to the six mechanical exoskeletons parked against the back wall. They are so far back that I nearly missed them. Each one is slate gray and about ten feet tall. Big enough to make it a formidable force, but not too big that we couldn’t operate them in most of the tunnels. We’d be banned from stairwells, but cargo elevators should work nicely.
I run my finger along the slick exterior. “What do you say we take them for a ride?”
“Hell yes!” Dean doesn’t waste a second, running to the closest mech unit.
He presses his hand against the chest piece and the mech splits down the center along the chest and legs with a hiss. The head area flips backward, and plates extend outward and away, making room for him to climb inside.
Dean removes his weapons from his chest armor and climbs into the mech. There’s a seat and footrests to support him, with each appendage being about two feet longer than his own. When he inserts his arms into the arm slots, the machine beeps to life. Straps extend from small compartments, holding him in place. He moves his arm and the helmet clamps into place, concealing his head, followed quickly by the legs and chest plate.
“Dude, this is so cool!” a mechanical voice booms from the mech. “This thing is loaded with weapons.”
He takes a step forward and the unit hisses and groans as gears and pistons maneuver the giant machine. A panel opens in each arm, revealing a Gatling gun and a flamethrower. A missile launcher emerges from each shoulder, armed with a half-dozen missiles each.
Dean jumps and the mech soars several yards through the air before landing with a thud and shaking the ground.
While he tests out the unit, I activate my own and climb inside. It’s surprisingly comfortable to be so bulky. I slip my hand into one of the arm holes and the unit pairs with my helmet, opening a slew of new commands. A video feed gives me a view of my surroundings. Thin green boxes follow Dean as he moves around, constantly alerting me to his location.
Activate Unit? Y/N
I accept and the mech comes to life. Pistons activate as the mech stands.
Mode: Standby.
Weapons: Standby.
When I focus on Mode, I’m given several options. Peacekeeping, Agility, and Heavy Artillery.
For Weapons, there is the option for manual or automatic. When I select manual, I’m given an interface with all the weapon attachments available.
There’s the heavy firepower of the Gatling gun, flamethrower, and homing missiles, but there are also plasma beams, stun beams, heat-seeking missiles. There’s also an option for EMP, an electro-magnetic pulse that disables the mech and all other technology within a hundred-yard radius as a last resort.
Better than having it fall into the wrong hands, I suppose.
I cycle between the various modes. Peacekeeping switches to non-lethal stun weapons. Agility engages thrusters along the legs, back, and arms, making it possible to maneuver mid-air. And Heavy Artillery equips all the weapons at once. There is also an option for a custom setup, but we don’t have time to do that.
I switch to Agility mode and jump. At my peak, I engage the thrusters and rocket over Dean. Despite its weight, my mech lands without jostling me. Then I switch to Heavy Artillery, and the weaponry springs to life.
The mech unit is surprisingly easy to control. It responds to my movement like a second layer of skin, and even though it’s bulky, the feedback never feels cumbersome.
“Route us to the control room using only tunnels and cargo elevators,” I order the AI, and a new route appears on the map. This one avoids stairwells and anywhere that the mech wouldn’t be able to fit. “Lock and load, Dean. Time to bring this baby home!”
Dean activates his flamethrower, and a cone of flame pours out in a steady stream. His normal voice cackles with laughter inside of my mech’s speakers.
I keep my mech in Heavy Artillery mode in case we run into any enemies. It doesn’t take long before we are tested.
Green squares appear in my feed as it locks onto something moving down the tunnel. Dark amorphous blobs glide from one wall to another. They look like slimes for a second, but I’ve never seen slimes move that fast. And the way they are constantly changing shapes is unsettling. They switch from blobs to humanoids to different depictions of beasts, like it doesn’t know what it wants to be.
“What are these creepy things?” Dean asks.
We’re too far out to analyze them, but as we move down the tunnel, they eventually become identifiable.
Foreign Lifeform. Ooze Beast. A sentient and more dangerous cousin to the slime, an ooze beast is capable of transforming into lifelike forms and launching acidic projectile attacks.
“I wonder how well our mechs will hold up against acid?” I say it more to myself than anything.
Dean switches his mech to Agility mode and his thrusters carry him down the tunnel. He grinds to a halt once in range and extends his arm. The Gatling gun emerges from the mech’s forearm and fires a burst of plasma beams into the oozes. The beams rip through their bodies the same as our weapons did to the slimes. Without a concentrated burst attack all it does is distort the ooze for a moment before the holes repair themselves.
I catch up to Dean just as the oozes begin to group up in front of him. One of them transforms into something resembling an elephant and shoots a blob of acid from its trunk. The acid hits Dean’s mech and slides off without so much as a scratch.
“Haha!” he shouts. “Let’s go!”
Dean runs into battle, punching and kicking, and firing plasma a
t the oozes. They assault him with acid, but it has no effect on the mech.
They fight, neither one gaining the upper hand. This is nothing more than a waste of time.
“Dean, if they can’t hurt us, we should just bypass them.” I activate Agility mode and launch myself forward.
“Oh no. I think I pissed them off.”
I’m confused as to what he’s talking about until I notice that the dozens of small green squares on my screen have morphed into one large square. The oozes have bonded together into a giant ooze. Combined, they dwarf our mechs.
One of the giant ooze’s appendages extends and engulfs a forklift, wrapping around it like a sledgehammer. Dean fires at the giant, but his plasma beams have no effect aside from rearranging the ooze.
The ooze beast lifts the forklift and smashes it into Dean, sending his mech crashing against the wall. One of the missile launchers on the mech’s shoulder snaps and hangs at an odd angle. The beast stalks toward him, forklift raised and ready to strike.
I switch back to Heavy Artillery and unleash a combination of plasma and fire. The plasma gains its attention, but the fire actually causes the ooze to melt and lose its grip on the forklift. The heavy machinery crashes to the floor.
“Fire!” I shout. “Kill it with fire!”
A stream of fire shoots from Dean’s left arm. The ooze recoils, but its massive leg is already weakened, causing it to collapse to one side. The ooze attempts to change form into something more bestial, but we press our attack. Giant sweat beads and blisters form along its outer layer as it melts and evaporates. We continue our assault, and the ooze shrinks by the second, shriveling until there is nothing left.
“Nicely done!” Dean raises his mech’s hand for a high-five, but I don’t acknowledge it.
“Did you forget that we are a team?” He can’t see my face, so I do my best to show my disapproval in my tone. “You could have let me know what you were thinking. This isn’t the first time you’ve rushed into battle without telling me. If you want to make it through this, then we have to work as a team at all times. Playing catchup means I’m always one step behind, and that might get us both killed.”
His mech stands like a silent sentry before he eventually speaks. “You’re right. I don’t know what I was thinking. That could have ended very badly.”
“Don’t sweat it.” I soften my voice. “Just keep me informed the next time you think about diving in head-first.”
We make our way down the tunnel and take a freight elevator up several floors, exiting into another insect-infested corridor. Our flamethrowers have no problem burning through webbing and setting the entire tunnel ablaze. Crispy carapaces crunch under our feet as we walk through.
My mech’s AI notices something crawling through the vents and locks on to its location, but it’s unable to identify the creature without a clear visual. I could blast it with a missile, but it’s better to let sleeping dogs lie.
We enter another hangar filled with fighter spacecraft. None of it is practical for what we’re doing here, so we hurry past and into the next transport tunnel. Our guide leads us to an elevator that’s too small for our mechs.
“What do we do now?” asks Dean.
“Looks like it’s the end of the line. We’re near the control room, but I think we’ll have to finish on foot.”
“Aww man, I was hoping we might get more use out of these.” His mech opens, revealing a disappointed teenager inside.
“They got us this far, so I’d say that’s a win.” I disengage my own mech and climb down. Then I realize our mistake. “Dammit!”
“What is it?” Dean’s head swivels as he looks for the source of danger.
“Our weapons. We had to leave them when we took the mechs.”
He pats his chest plate and reaches around at the piece covering his back, grasping for weapons and grenades that are no longer there. “Are we screwed?”
“No way. We’ve gotten out of stickier situations than this, we just need a little ingenuity. The control room is only a few floors up.”
We enter the elevator. Nothing looks out of order, which is all the more reason we should keep our guard up. After an agonizingly slow climb, we exit onto the level where the control room is located.
The hallways are very businesslike and our steps clack as we walk. Occasionally, something moves in the ducts overhead. Pictures of men in military garb hang along the walls. Two navy stripes run along the outer edges of the light gray floors.
Our level-ten badge gets us through two gated entries, but when we arrive at the control room, our access is denied.
The octagonal control room is surrounded by massive panes of tinted glass on all sides. I can make out several monitors, and a ring of consoles with glowing buttons and switches. There’s a hologram of the ship in the center, flashing red in numerous spots. Could that be all the areas that have been taken over by alien lifeforms?
Next to the hologram is a podium topped with a cube that hovers in mid-air. Some sort of alien runes or letters are engraved in each of its sides. They shine with a brilliant internal energy. I have no doubt that that is the powerful artifact we were sent to retrieve.
The bodies are so still that I almost don’t notice them lying on the floor. They don’t appear to show any signs of trauma. A skeletal figure leans forward in the captain’s seat, head nestled between its knees.
“This is creepy.” Dean’s lip curls up in disgust. “What do you think happened to them?”
“No idea. Maybe it has something to do with that cube. Or the reason why so many different types of aliens are on the ship. Maybe they locked themselves in the control room when the ship was overrun. Who knows?” I kick hard at the glass door blocking our way, but it doesn’t budge. It’s clearly made of something stronger than pure glass. “We need to find a way in.”
We circle the perimeter of the control room, searching for any signs of weakness, until Dean and I reconvene on the other side.
Dean presses his hands to the glass and looks into the control room. “Gah, we’re so close! Maybe we have to go back. Either find a badge with higher clearance or a weapon capable of getting us inside.”
I ask the helmet AI to search for a higher clearance badge but receive an error notice. It can only route us to things labeled as part of the ship’s layout or inventory. I place my hands to the glass and join Dean. Maybe there’s something inside that will give us a clue.
I scour the room but come up with nothing. “We can work our way back and check any rooms we have access to until we find something useful.”
I don’t like the idea one bit, but there’s little else we can do under the circumstances. We’ve made it so far to have to start backtracking now, but I don’t let my frustration get to me. I need to stay positive for Dean.
We step into the hallway and something scurries through the duct overhead.
“Wait! That’s it.” I grab Dean by the shoulder. “If we can find a way into the air ducts, there has to be one that empties into the control room!”
He grins, but it slowly fades into a frown. “But what about whatever is...” He points up at the ducts. “Up there.”
I hadn’t thought of that. We’ve heard something moving through the ducts since we first started. There’s no telling what it could be, but it’s not like we have any better options. “We’ll just have to deal with it.”
I instruct the AI to route us to the nearest maintenance closet, where we find a toolbox that will hopefully get us into the air ducts. We have to backtrack to one of the main hallways before we find an accessible entrance into the ventilation system.
The vent comes off easy enough, revealing a square duct that goes in for a few feet before angling straight up. There’s enough space to crawl on our hands and knees, but once we reach the vertical area, it’s too high to reach from a standing position.
“Climb on my shoulders and I’ll boost you up. Then you can pull me up.” I press my body against the metal duct and
brace myself.
Dean grabs my shoulders and places his feet on my thighs. It’s a tight fit, but he’s able to leverage his back against the other side of the duct and weasel his way upward. Once I feel his feet pressing against my shoulders, I step back, giving him a better angle to climb to the next level. The metal creaks and groans as he climbs, but eventually, his weight vanishes and his feet disappear over the ledge.
There’s more groaning as he contorts himself in the tight space before his head pops out and he extends a hand to me.
Dean leans down as far as he can without losing his balance, but he’s still about two feet out of my reach. “You’re going to have to jump.”
And hope that I don’t pull him down when I grab hold.
A loud groan echoes through the ducts, and Dean whips his head around.
“Was that you?” I ask, but I already know the answer.
He’s wide-eyed as he shakes his head.
“Hold on a second. I’ll be right back.”
I drop to my knees and crawl back into the hallway. Inside the toolbox, I grab a hammer and a screwdriver. They’re not great weapons, but they’re better than nothing.
Dean wears an anxious expression when I return, but he keeps quiet.
“Here, I’m going to toss these up to you first.”
He catches the tools and places them next to him before extending his hand once again.
I take a deep breath and jump as high as I can. My hand clasps around his and I press both legs against the walls of the duct. Dean’s face goes red as he tries to pull me up, but I’m not moving. This is our best chance, so I can’t let go.
I dig my feet into the metal and try to shimmy by back up a few inches at a time. Once my legs are extended as far as they can go without losing my grip, I put all my weight onto Dean and lift my legs as fast as I can. Dean grunts as my weight pulls his body to its limits.
I shimmy up the wall again and repeat the process until I can see the open duct in front of me.
“Alright, I’m going to make a move and I need you to pull with everything you’ve got. On three. One. Two. Three.”
Pangea Online 3: Vials and Tribulations Page 16
