Black Sun (Phantom Server: Book #3) (21 page)

“Was there a solution?”

“There was indeed. In the five years of exploring Argus we’d learned to use the interstellar network. We knew enough to be able to transmit identity matrices. The big question was, where to? Eurasia station was only a transit point. It couldn’t accept more than a few thousand players at a time.”

“That’s when you decided to use Darg?”

“We had no other option! This was our last resource. We were desperate. The plan was to eliminate slavers and take over the Founders’ equipment. We were going to transport the few in-mode-bound survivors to the military space backup center and send their identities to Darg in order to start a colony. But their command didn’t reckon on the Disciples ever being a power. Lots of mistakes were made. You know the result,” he fell into a sullen silence.

“What happened to the groups sent to the Crystal Sphere?”

“Dunno. We’ve lost contact. Last thing I heard, the Reapers were prowling everywhere.”

“Not a single one of them managed to log out?”

“Oh yes. Some of the more experienced gamers did. But what were they supposed to do in real life? Bore themselves to death in their capsule flats? You were the same, you should understand. We did warn them about the dangers. Still, every single one of them logged back in.”

“To face the Reapers in one last battle,” I added, thinking of the river bank strewn with the avatars of dead players.

The Major startled but didn’t say anything. He threw his head back, his glare filled with desperate hope. “I still think we have a chance. I need to get to the communications station. I tried to fight my way through but I couldn’t. You have Mnemotechnics. Together we might just make it. Think you can help me?”

We still have a chance?
Was he delirious? He must have been suffering the mind-crushing effects of exo multiplied by the gravity of his wounds.

“Where do you keep the first twenty players?” I demanded.

He knew very well what I meant. He fumbled with the settings, opening a holographic image of what looked like some sort of bunker.

“Whichever of them you mean, they’re all there,” he ticked a few adjacent rooms. “The communications station is just next to them,” he said, highlighting it too.

It looked as if he’d been right: we were heading in the same direction.

“Where’s this place?” I asked.

“It’s right here. In the technopark.”

“You mentioned this military space backup center. Can we move the in-mode capsules there? Mine included?”

“We sure can, provided we can get to the communications station,” he answered unhesitatingly.

He wasn’t telling me everything. I could see it in his eyes.

Quest alert: Shadows of the Past. Quest failed.

New quest available: The Nature of Avatroid

You’ve found out the truth about the recent developments in the Darg system. Now you need to use this knowledge to find out the development route taken by the ancient artificial intellect known to you as Avatroid.

Deadline: none.

Earth. Infosystems Corporation Technopark.

T
wo worlds that had finally come into contact. Two views of the same problem. Two realities that had merged.

My incidental discovery of Phantom Server combined with my insatiable urge to play this “game of the future” had given me no inkling of what I’d been about to get myself into.

The sun had already risen, hanging high above the buildings. The rarefied air was fresh and cold. Infosystems Corporation used to build its complexes safely above the emissions layer.

“Where’s the entrance to the bunker?” I asked.

Dominic pointed in its general direction. “You can’t see it from here. About a thousand feet as a crow flies. First we need to find a suitable position, then I'll show you exactly where it is. I tried to fight my way through to it twice. It didn’t work. I tried to get there via a magnetic monorail line but I walked right into the harpies. I just about made it out.”

“I still don’t understand how mobs managed to get out. How did they materialize? I thought that nanites weren’t supposed to interact with such primitive creatures?”

“You’re dead right there,” the Major headed for a service stairwell which took us one floor down toward the monorail looping around the nearest towers. “They have nothing to do with gaming. Those monsters escaped from our AI labs.”

“They’re
sentient
? Jesus, why?”

The Major forwarded me a file containing the images of a harpy and about a dozen similar monsters. Some seemed familiar from my gaming experience; others looked like nothing I’d seen before.

“They’re alien,” the Major commented. “We discovered their images in the Founders’ databases. We created their avatars in case of first contact. They’re generated by a device which contains a nanite unit which the operator can use to control the creature via a mnemonic interface.”

He spoke matter-of-factly, but for me, his every word was a revelation.

The mythical creatures that the gaming corporation had borrowed from various intercultural legends — did they really exist? Had they visited Earth at some point in the past? That could explain their presence in our mythology.

“I know it’s hard to believe,” the Major said. “You don’t need to. Just accept the fact.”

We walked a narrow bridge across the abyss separating two of the towers. Far ahead, dark dots circled the sky.

“What makes them so aggressive? These aren’t the properties one would employ in a successful first contact, are they? Or am I missing something?”

“No, you are not. They weren’t supposed to be aggressive. I don’t know much about it,” he admitted, “but I did hear about some glitches in the system. Whenever the operator ceased controlling them, the avatars’ behavior became unpredictable. Apparently, nanites were the problem. The current theory is, alien nanites are capable of preserving information of both their alien hosts’ appearance and their character.”

He didn’t have time to expand on it further. We reached a balcony and used it to enter the building. Immediately we became aware of suspicious noises. The sound of heavy footsteps and the whine of servomotors... it sounded like robots... or human beings wearing armored suits.

I gestured to the Major to take cover while I activated Piercing Vision.

The nanites infiltrated one of the rooms. The sound of heavy footsteps and the screeching of servomotors grew closer.

The glow of 3D monitors seeped through the gloom. A man sat in a chair by a desk: his arms hanging listlessly, his head tilted, his eyes wide open.

Dead.

The floor and the walls seemed to be vibrating. The sounds came from powerful speakers built into the walls. One of the screens showed what seemed to be a cyber lab. A futuristic robot was pacing the middle of the room.

“Whew,” the Major’s face was pale. “It’s only a model. Come on, then. This way,” he checked the plan and pushed an unlocked door. I glimpsed an emergency staircase.

* * *

We climbed out onto the roof. This building towered over the technopark structures.

“This is the Corporation’s HQ,” the Major didn’t mince words. He pointed at a de-energized flybot motionless in the center of the landing pad. “If only we could find some way to charge it up, we could go there directly.”

Sounded tempting, no doubt about it, had it not been for the gang of harpies circling the sky nearby.

I noticed some cables snaking around a service vault. “Let’s switch on the mains first,” I said, “and worry about it after.”

“They’ll see the signature. Think you can camouflage it?”

“Easy,” I selected a nanite group and activated Steel Mist.

“You know how to use them, don’t you?” the Major asked. “What’s your skill level?”

“Fifty-seven. So where’s this entrance to the bunker?”

We hid behind a low concrete glass parapet.

“See the road junction?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Below it there’s an airlock. That’s the entrance.”

The view was distorted by the haze of a force field. I had to send some nanites there. Soon they began streaming data to my mind expander.

The Major struggled peering into the distance. I forwarded him the data.

The airtight gate was shut. I could see some armed people standing next to it. I read their signatures. Reapers. There were about twenty of them outside. I could only imagine how many there were inside.

The view slowly shifted in my mind’s eye. Magnetic monorail lines intertwined in the gossamer lacework of a transport junction. The scarlet outline of laser turrets surrounded the installation’s perimeter. I made out numerous fortifications behind the veil of the force shield. Made of armored plastic and camouflaged with holograms, they resembled cliff ledges, perfectly unnoticeable to the naked eye.

“Dominic?” I asked the Major. “D’you have authorized access? Think you can open the gate remotely?”

“I tried to already. It doesn’t work. The hybrid must have changed the codes.”

I studied the gate. I could probably use Disintegration to knock it out. And then what? Would I have enough nanites left? “Any other access?”

“Here,” he marked them on the plan. “The gravity elevator and the cargo terminal. The elevator is being closely guarded. The terminal is shut down.”

To the right of the airlock I indeed saw a monorail station. I redirected the nanites to scan the station’s equipment. It still had power but the Major was right: the only thing still functioning was the security system which was controlled autonomously by computers independent of the network.

“Why don’t the turrets react to the mobs?”

“The security system is adaptive. What’s the point in shooting at holograms?”

“Well, some of those harpies look material enough,” I said.

“They’re not stupid, either. They keep a safe distance, as you can see. It’s not the turrets they’re afraid of though. It’s the special-purpose ammo that the Reapers have found there.”

I began a repeat scan, this time creating a detailed model of access routes to the installation. “How much cargonite did you recover from that alien ship?”

“About twenty tons, or so I was told,” the Major replied.

“Why so little?”

“Most of the cargonite was part of their equipment. For that reason, it couldn’t have been utilized. All the equipment is stored in the lower levels of the bunker. They only used the ship’s hull to harvest cargonite.”

I glanced at the harpies. Their steely wings glistened purple. The bodies of a few seemed to have higher nanite density than the rest; their behavior was marked by a calm confidence as they circled the high-altitude sky.

“Do you happen to have the remote avatar control codes?”

“No.”

“Never mind. We’ll think of something.”

I sent a mental command to build a microscopic probe. I entered an emergency command sequence for nanite control and selected the weakest harpy as target. It was little more than a translucent outline. Dominic was following my actions through the combat scanner but refrained from asking any questions.

Having received my freebie upgrade, the creature soared into the sky, then banked rapidly, attacking the nearest mob. The harpy’s claws broke out in bluish flames as it sank them into its victim.

The Major cussed, watching in amazement as the monster devoured its opponent. Immediately it attacked again, this time in vain. Sparks flew everywhere, but still the harpy failed to get hold of more nanites.

“Easy, man,” the Major said warily. “Make sure you know what you’re doing. Or we might end up with the kind of mobs that make the Reapers look like Mickey Mouse.”

“It’s only a one-time code,” I reassured him. “We don’t have enough ammo to fight everyone. This might level our chances up a bit.”

“You want to use the harpies against them? They’re not that stupid, you know. They’ve already burned their fingers. They don’t get anywhere near the junction.”

“You mean they won’t even chase a flybot?”

He apparently didn’t like my idea. Still, he didn’t let his skepticism show. Instead, he asked, “All right, then. Spit it out.”

* * *

You need to use your old skills.
Charon’s words had served me well in these last few days.

Dominic didn’t like my plan at all, I could see it. Still, he didn’t say anything. He paused, thinking, then nodded his agreement and headed for the flybot.

Me, I had nothing left to lose. But his motives were a mystery. Was it his sense of duty? Guilt? Or just being stubborn?

Why was he so desperate to get to the communications station? Did he hope to use it to contact his family?

I had no idea. Nor did I have the time to second-guess his actions. My brain was struggling to embrace both realities as it was.

Hissing, the door of the flybot’s passenger compartment slid open.

“Buckle up,” Dominic’s voice echoed in the earphones from the already sealed pilot’s compartment.

I climbed inside and clicked the seatbelts shut. “Mind sharing the data?” I asked. It had already become part of me.

A new operative window opened in my interface. I looked over the on-board systems. A powerful hydrogen engine, two antigravs, new improved G-force absorbers and an armored hull. No integrated weapons though. This was a purely civilian vehicle with a penchant for the utmost in comfort.

“I’m done.”

Dominic activated the manual controls. Camouflaged by Steel Mist, he lifted off and made a few U-turns to test the antigravs, hovering just a few feet above the roof.

“It’s working fine,” he said. “Shall we go?”

“Yeah. Pick up the nearest harpies.”

An unpleasant chill ran over me, indicating a rapid change in altitude. The flybot dove under a bending monorail and headed for its target.

I removed the camouflage. Immediately the harpies noticed us.

Dominic banked into a steep turn. He was an excellent pilot. You’d never think he’d worked in communications.

He spiraled us around the tower, all the way down to the ground, then back up, weaving a path amid the towers. Despite the functioning G-force absorbers, the flight took your breath away.

“Zander, I’m on course! The beasties are following. There's at least fifty of them!”

“I can see.”

The harpies chased after us, following in our wake like a heap of dry leaves raised by a gust of wind.

* * *

Another group of harpies came for us head-on.

“Dominic, keep to the right! Try to avoid them!”

The flybot ducked dangerously to one side and brushed the corner of a tower, striking up a cascade of sparks.

“Zander, send them the code!”

“Too early! All they’ll do is fight between themselves! We don’t need it!”

Dominic cussed under his breath as he maneuvered every which way, aggroing the mobs. He did well. Their numbers kept growing.

“That’s it, the engines won’t take any more,” he wheezed, changing course, as he rapidly approached the installation.

We were met by bursts of submachine gun fire. Bullets plastered the flybot’s frontal armor plate. The fake Corporation workers took up their positions by the massive airlock. Come on now...

A shuddering blow threw our vehicle off course. The starboard hull was sliced into uneven strips as the creature’s cargonite claws ripped through the metal with ease.

“Try to get to the cargo terminal!”

Dominic was doing his best. We were thrown from side to side. The starboard antigrav began billowing thick smoke.

“We’re losing altitude!”

The harpies dashed overhead, then scattered in all directions, maneuvering amid the interweaving monorails.