The Outlaw (Phantom Server: Book #2) (14 page)

I needed some nanites badly. Still, at the moment I had no suitable source material to replicate them from.

Novitsky shuffled his feet nervously. “Should we take a look?”

Did he need to ask? I motioned my group to proceed.

* * *

The rain came bucketing down out of nowhere, decreasing visibility. The growing wind crumpled through it; low clouds dropped forking bolts of lightning whose flashes ripped through the dark, illuminating the area for miles around.

The rover's armor gleamed wetly. Its powerful front roller tire dug into the gravel. Its tread was eaten through. The vehicle stood on its wheel hubs.

We had about a hundred and fifty feet left to cover. Our gear sensors beeped anxiously. A new stroke of lightning caused a small rockslide, triggering our movement detectors.

We walked in a loose V-formation, with myself at the front flanked by Vandal and Foggs. Novitsky stayed in the rear with instructions not to join us in combat.

So much for the technologies of the future! I had to get myself a bio scanner at the first opportunity. In the meantime, I had to keep my eyes peeled.

A hundred feet. The rain pelted down on us, triggering more rockslides; torrents of frothy rainwater cascaded down the shallow ledges, tearing off unstable lumps of cracked lime. The movement detector was going off the scale as large chunks of cliffs thudded to the ground, exploding in cascades of sharp debris and sending some of it our way.

Another flash of lightning afforded me a glimpse of the area. Immediately the mind expander drew a brightly illuminated panorama of the surrounding cliffs — and of some enormous monsters attacking us from two directions at once!

They vaguely resembled giant spiders. Their body temperature was virtually the same as that of the surrounding air, the colorings of their chitin armor blending with the gloom. They approached in ten-foot wide bounds, flanking us.

“Vandal, Foggs — down!” I clanked the mount of our pulse machine gun against the ground and fired a long volley over their heads, pulling aggro to myself. The gun's barrel moved in a wide semicircle. The static danced along its compensation coils as it ripped a few of the mobs apart. The remaining ones went for me.

I activated my muscle enhancers and ran for dear life toward the rover, breaking away. I tumbled over the rover's front roller and stood up. The cliff was now covering my back. I raised the gun again and raked the mobs with close-range fire.

Four of them were thrown back by the blast. Only two, apparently more experienced, managed to duck in time and showered me with a hail of quills from the pulsating muscle tubes located on their stomachs. They then resumed their attack albeit not directly. One of them leaped onto a cliff; the other climbed the rover's roof and went for me, assaulting me with an unexpectedly powerful swing of its long three-joint arm. The monster failed to break my armor but it sure distracted me, making me stagger.

Immediately the other mob dropped onto me from above like a ton of bricks. My gear's servomotors screeched, protesting. The crashing blow dimmed my vision; my life bar shrank a good 30%.

As I fell, I instinctively shielded my face with my gun's butt. The creature's mandibles closed around it and very nearly snapped it in two.

I lowered my now pretty unserviceable weapon and whipped out my handgun. I didn't have a chance to shoot it though. The mob's body jerked, then slackened on top of me drenching me in its sticky green blood.

“You all right?”

I felt them pull its heavy body off me. Foggs offered me his hand, helping me to my feet.

I winced with pain. My breathing was erratic. I could taste blood from my bitten lip.

“Good job, everyone!” Vandal forced my gun out of the spider's clenched mandibles. I glanced at the creature's dying tag,

A Daugoth. Xenomorph. Level 21.

“Novitsky, I want you to gut it. Find out more about its abilities. Any information at all!”

“You need help?” Foggs asked anxiously, apparently wondering why I wasn't using stimpacks.

“I'm all right. The metabolic implant should be enough. Let's check the area. Vandal, you cover us!”

* * *

The area around the rover was littered with deformed — even mauled, I'd say — plastic containers. Their contents had spilled out, ruined beyond retrieval.

“Zander, come have a look!” Foggs called out.

Next to the rover's open cargo ramp, a dead body lay at the foot of the cliffs. Dressed in full pressurized gear, it was wound with fine brown threads similar to cobwebs. The character's tag was unusual. He was marked as
awaiting respawn
. The countdown timer showed 0:10. Still, there was no name next to it.

“He's only been dead for two hours,” Foggs grieved, brushing the nasty brown substance off the dead man’s suit. “If only we'd come here earlier!”

I crouched next to him. The suit's armor plates were all scratched up from many a blow. Still, I didn't see any penetration damage. “Help me to turn him round.”

I finally saw a small perforation in the back of his helmet. Having scanned it, I excluded the possibility of a bullet hole. There were organic particles left on the edges I identified as
alien insect matter
.

“Zander, I'm finished there,” Novitsky walked over to us and broke off, noticing the dead body.

“That was quick,” Foggs tried to cheer him up.

“Nothing much to do, really. The mob is in the database.”

“So what can you tell us about it?”

“A
Dargian Spider, Small
,” Novitsky said. “Abilities: moves in long leaps, hunts in a pack, showers its prey with its toxic quills.”

“Did you say
Small
?”

“Exactly. They also come in Medium and Large. I've looked them up: they also have Paralysis and Sucking the Victim Dry. The first debuff won't work against our sealed gear though. The neurotoxin can't penetrate it.”

Vandal was listening in too. “Any loot?”

“Only some exo ingredient,” Novitsky answered. “I can't read its stats yet though. I need to be level 7 to do that.”

“All right. Go gut the rest of them, then.”

I wasn't very happy with his research. Did that mean these canyons harbored bigger game?

With Foggs’ help, I turned the body around again. I unclasped the visor and forced it up to see the man's face while the timer was still working.

A chill ran down my spine. There was nothing left of him at all. Even his bones were gone.

I noticed a small pool of brownish liquid in the back of his helmet and called Novitsky back. “Scan it for me, will ya?”

He gulped, pulling himself together, then crouched next to me. A probe unsheathed itself from a fat node on his glove and touched the puddle of slime.

“So? Come on, don't drag it out!”

“It's... how can I say...” he faltered. “It's a mixture of damaged human DNA and a spider's digestive juices.”

Oh, great. No wonder we couldn't see the player's nickname. The game engine had already reevaluated the situation. The player was no more. Respawning wasn't an option. No such hope when you're being digested alive within your own depressurized suit.

“What if it was Kathryn?” Foggs asked.

“I don't think so. The quest is still active.”

“So what do we do now?”

“For starters, let's collect their weapons and supplies. Then we'll keep on going in search for them. The rover is a six-seater. We've got to find them all. Some might still be alive.”

“And what if we come across those bigger spiders?”

I slapped his shoulder. “I'll do the tanking. Come on now.”

Their equipment turned out to contain quite a few things we could use.

Three individual gravity generators, a force shield belt, several stimpack kits, some rare exo-based formulas and about a hundred micro nuclear batteries. Weapons: a second heavy pulse machine gun, two pulse rifles and plenty of spare parts. Much to my surprise, this so-called raid lugged around a portable drilling rig and an extremely rare technology scanner. Why a group of exobiologists would need any of these, I had no idea.

Naturally, I wanted to check the scanner but it turned out to be broken. I shoved it down my inventory. I'd have to look into it at a later date. The life support cartridges proved another disappointment: they didn't fit our gear either in size or in their connector type. I told the others to collect them anyway.

I claimed the force shield belt for myself and changed its settings, using the video of our fight with the Daugoths as a guide. I used to have a similar belt in the past so I had some experience with them. I set up the trigger times to the speed of ejecting quills: I remembered only too well how the Daugoths had very nearly pierced my own suit with them.

That brief combat had given me a lot of food for thought.

I opened my character development tab. Ever since the assault module had crashed, I hadn't had one spare moment to sit down and distribute the available characteristic and skill points. Now it had become a matter of survival. The mobs lurking within the depths of these canyons were so apparently superior to us in levels.

Oh wow. I'd grown quite a bit in the last twenty-four-odd hours in the game:

Zander. Level 25. Pilot.

Intellect, 8 pt. (+1 bonus from the Semantic Processor; +0.9 for Current Research;

Strength, 10 pt. (+0.7 for Strenuous Exercise)

Willpower, 10 pt. (+0.6 for Stress Handling)

Agility, 5 pt. (+2 bonus from the Reflex Enhancer)

Perception, 7 pt. (+2 bonus from the semantic processor; +0.8 for use of Neural Nets and nanite control)

Stamina, 7 pt. (+0.9 for extreme survival)

Learning Skills, 8 pt. (+0.2 for creation of unique scanner files)

Charisma, 1 pt.

Skills:

Piloting of Small Spacecraft, 10 (00)

Piloting of Medium and Large Spacecraft, 7 (+0,9 for taking over control of an assault module)

Combat Maneuvering 9 (+0,4 for assaulting enemy positions and performing an emergency landing)

Navigation, 10 (+0.7)

Mechanic, 1 (0,0):

- Repairs 4 (0,0)

Alien Technologies, 2 (+0,6 for creation of unique scanner files)

Mnemotechnics, 3 (+0,75 for facing and defeating a Founders' AI)

Combat Skills, 7 (0.0):

- Light weapons, 7 (0.0)

- Heavy weapons, 7 (+0.1 for using a heavy pulse machine gun)

- Energy weapons, 9 (0.0)

- Accuracy, 9 (-1 for fatigue)

- Critical hits, 1 (+1% to the possibility of dealing critical damage to the enemy)

- Defense, 6 (lowers all incoming damage 6%)

Abilities:

Replication 2 (allows you to create two nanite colonies)

Steel Mist 1 (the nanites will generate a false signature, concealing you from low-level (levels 1 through 10) detection systems)

Object Replication 1 (allows you to create primitive items and devices using existing templates)

Piercing Vision 1 (your nanites will form a reconnaissance net, transmitting visual information and scanners' data within the radius of 30 ft.)

Integration. Closed. Requires a higher Mnemotechnics skill

Breakdown. Closed. Requires a higher Mnemotechnics skill

Disintegration. Closed. Requires a higher Mnemotechnics skill

Plasma Blast. Closed. Requires a higher Mnemotechnics skill

Advanced Integration. Closed. Requires higher Mnemotechnics and Alien Technologies skills

You have 5 characteristic points available!

You have 10 skill points available!

You have 10 ability points available!

Right. So now after the new upgrade, every level gave me 1 point to invest in main characteristics and two each for both skills and abilities. Great.

I tried to raise Mnemotechnics: no way. Shame. Same for Alien Technologies. Apparently, I could only level them up by doing some research and handling implants, nanites and neuronets. I'd love to know why it was so. But I also had a funny feeling I wouldn't be able to get an answer to this question, at least not until the game was officially released. For the time being, I just had to accept it.

I closed the tab and reached for the two machine guns. I tried to lift them and take aim. The result was rather inadequate.

Warning! You cannot use 2 HPMGs that are not integrated into your gear. Requirements: Strength, 15; Combat Skills, 10; Heavy Weapons, 12.