| |
––––––––
HOW ABOUT that! Most of the Dark Faction didn’t want to fight us? That was astonishing news because it went against the whole image in my brain. From my very first day in the game, my leaders had explained the Dark Faction as an aggressive and implacable enemy that wished us death. And a ghastly harsh one. I had heard stories about players from my faction they took captive. The Dark Faction torturers would stop at nothing to get information or recruit them. They used the most cruel and perverse torture methods, breaking prisoners both physically and mentally using drugs and a large share of psionic magic. And I was thinking about those horror stories during tonight’s flight over the bay.
And now, in personal conversation with a Dark Faction player, I come to find out that they never wanted to fight, and their mage rulers were just forcing them? Very interesting! I just didn’t know if the technician girl was voicing a common opinion or her personal views. And it was too bad but we couldn’t keep talking because our antigrav was already coming in for a landing.
We were met by a group of soldiers in heavy armor. Not robot-assisted exoskeleton suits like Gerd Tamara and Eduard Boyko had, they were just encased head to toe in thick suits of metal. I was even afraid to imagine the Strength parameter needed to constantly wear these sturdy but insanely heavy pieces. My Gnat probably wouldn’t be able to move in a tea kettle like that. Plus, the players also needed to carry weapons. Everyone I came across had a heavy plasma rifle of Geckho production. I had ordered ones just like it for my faction, so I knew perfectly that one of these rifles, which could go straight through a foot and a half of reinforced concrete, weighted forty pounds. Basically, the people who came out to meet me were titans, not humans!
I checked their names and levels, then correctly identified the group leader:
Gerd T’yu-Pan Yn-U. Human. La-Fin Faction. Level-104 Shocktroop.
Level one hundred and four! This guy was freaking awesome. T’yu-Pan clearly wasn’t just wearing through his pants seat here in the citadel, he must have been very active in combat missions if he managed to level up that much. An intrusive thought told me this Shocktroop gained all that experience by killing my allies, but I chased it off. Yes, he was an enemy of my allies, a very strong enemy. But now that didn’t matter.
Gerd T’yu-Pan tried to bow awkwardly, which was not easy to do in the stiff armor suit, then he extended a hand, helping the Princess and I down the gangway.
“My lord, what are your orders?”
He addressed me with all due respect, clearly accepting the new political order. Only after this did I calm down. Given Dark Faction players like him accepted Gnat as their new leader, that meant my claims to power were not unfounded and I would find support among the players. And really, why not? One mage-ruler of the La-Fin Dynasty was gone, and another mage from the same family had come to take his place. As far as a commoner from the magocratic world was concerned, that was the way things worked.
I asked the garrison leader if he knew about the captive paladin girl from the Human-3 Faction. A shadow of doubt ran across his face, the polite smile instantly crawled off his lips.
Successful Authority check!
The Shocktroop considered, but after a brief pause I did get an answer:
“Leng Gnat, there was a clear order from the mages around the former Leng not to tell anybody about this prisoner under penalty of death for the whole family in the real world. I can only say that a La-Varrez Faction tiltrotor is on its way here for her and will arrive any minute. There’s an order to transfer the prisoner to them.”
Very valuable information! So enemy mages would soon be flying in for the leader of the Second Legion with the goal of taking Gerd Tamara where we couldn’t get her. That meant I had to hurry! Until then, I wanted to ask the garrison commander to take me to the captive Gerd Tamara, but now my plans had changed:
“Where is Gerd Tamara being kept? No, don’t say it out loud! We won’t be harming your family. Just look me in the eyes!”
I even raised my helmet visor to make full eye contact. Got it! A flood of thoughts from the huge and self-confident warrior flooded out onto me:
“Yes, that’s the right move. Saves me breaking an order. I see our new mage ruler has a delicate touch. Okay then, let’s see how good he is at this. After all, this is the same Gnat they used to scare all of us, the one who had a high price on his head. Hey, I don’t actually remember that being called off. We’ll have to protect the Leng. Otherwise who’s to say what could happen. There are all kinds of freaks in the citadel right now. A few would cut up their own mother if the money’s right. What’s more the Leng is wounded, look at the sling on his arm. Although he is a mage, he doesn’t need full range of motion. But it feels like he’s been staring at me too long. Coruler Thumor-Anhu could have read everything he needed five times by now. Gnat must have low experience. Very bad. If the mage rulers find that out, Gnat is a dead man.”
This soldier had such “loud” thoughts they distracted and kept me from concentrating on what I wanted — information about the paladin girl. But in the end I managed! In my head, at first indistinctly, but growing in detail with every second, I received a three-dimensional map of the citadel with all its elevators and tangled corridors. And there was the place I was going! Nineteenth floor below ground, down in some natural karst caves. I broke the mental contact, trying not to show how much effort I was expending.
Cartography skill increased to level sixty-three!
Psionic skill increased to level eighty-two!
Mysticism skill increased to level thirty!
Oh yeah! On my mini-map I could see all the rooms and corridors of the huge Dark Faction fortress even though I had never been there before! I suspected it was the combination of reasonably well-levelled Cartography and Psionic skills that allowed me to receive the information like this. Now I definitely knew where to go. However, there was something I needed to do before heading off to rescue the girl:
“Gerd T’yu-Pan, you’re exactly right! I really don’t have much experience in wizardry for now, so meeting mages from the La-Varrez Faction doesn’t enter into my plans. They must be delayed! And that isn’t to say attack or arrest them. We have no need for a war with the La-Varrez Faction. We need to gingerly draw out time. Whoever comes in that tiltrotor, tell them that their flight was not coordinated with faction leadership so we’ll need some time to check if they should really be here. Invite them to relax in a recreation room. That one in that building to the south there. Treat our treasured guests to whatever they like, make sure they’re comfortable after the long flight. I need an extra quarter hour.”
It was a difficult moment. Whose side would the garrison leader choose? The new Leng he’d just met? Sure I was the spouse of Princess Minn-O, but I wasn’t even a member of the La-Fin Faction. And on the other side were the powerful mage-rulers from the inner-circle of previous ruler Leng Thumor-Anhu La-Fin.
Successful Authority check!
Successful Fame check!
The strong warrior straightened up to his whole respectable height, raised a right hand bent at the elbow and squeezed his fingers into such a tight ball that they cracked. That was the soldier’s greeting in the magocratic world.
“Yes sir, Leng Gnat La-Fin! I’ll delay our ‘treasured guests.’“
* * *
JUST WITH MY WAYEDDA, not bringing anyone from the garrison to protect us, I walked the unending hallways of the huge citadel. We met very few players on our way. That was evidence of both the late hour and the fact that the war with the Human-3 Faction was technically not over. Because of that, almost everyone capable of holding a weapon was still on the front. A thought even flickered by that a sudden landing party of a hundred of the highest-level soldiers from the First and Second legions could easily capture this fortress. And as this was the main citadel, the source of their claim to the level-four node, it would be a devastating blow. Immediately the Dark Faction would be down two thousand three hundred forty-nine players. Plus their huge stockpiles and months of dedicated labor would be out the window.
But all that could happen only if I told the Human-3 Faction it was possible, provided a star frigate for landing and shared maps of the tangled corridors and defensive structures in the underground citadel. But I wasn’t going to do that. Yes, it was hard for me to consider myself a part of the La-Fin Faction, but I wasn’t going to betray the people entrusted to me.
“That elevator there! Now we need floor minus nineteen.”
Minn-O La-Fin stopped in surprise and looked at me doubtfully:
“My husband, I don’t believe the shaft goes that deep. And there is no minus nineteen button on the panel. The deepest it goes is minus three. I have been on that floor. That’s where the La-Fin Faction’s secure respawn room is located. My point was set there for a long time.”
“Nevertheless, on my map the shaft goes lower. And there must be some reason for this guard,” I said, pointing at the young man listening to our conversation. Thankfully, he didn’t understand a word of Geckho. Then I said to him: “Soldier, take us to minus nineteen.”
Successful Fame check!
“Yes, my lord!” the guardsman took a card from his pocket, his hands shaking in panic, and placed it into a narrow barely visible crack under the normal sensor panel. In an instant, extra keys came on the panel and the guardsman obligingly selected “-19.”
A minute later, Minn-O and I were on the very lowest floor of the fortress and looking down a corridor that trailed off in the endless distance. Based on my map though, there was an end: a door leading to the very bottom of a narrow mountain crevasse. And there, carved into the rock, were the very well disguised hangars for the Sio-Mi-Dori antigravs. So that was where the five remaining Dark Faction assault vehicles were hidden! But the antigravs themselves didn’t concern me much, I hadn’t come for them. I pointed my companion to an armored door in the corridor wall:
“That way!”
Scanning skill increased to level forty-three!
The only thing that made this door different from the hundreds we’d seen before were the automatic high-speed turrets hidden in nearby ceiling tiles and wall niches. I discovered them by complete coincidence when I activated scanning to see what to expect inside. In fact, there were turrets both in the hallway and in the room itself! I wondered what they were protecting against when they placed turrets inside a locked room? Dangerous escaped prisoners? Or was this not an element of defense but a way of getting rid of unwanted witnesses? Or even a guaranteed way of sending one’s self to respawn if something went wrong? In any case, I found the one I was looking for: among the three player markers, behind some closed doors I saw:
Human. Level-102 Paladin.
Paladin was a rare class in general, so this was a sure thing. Other than Gerd Tamara, there was a level-89 Torturer and a level-84 Pyromancer Mage. However, I had a problem: the armored door was locked! Ugh, if only I had my trusty Annihilator, a little thing like a locked door couldn’t stop me. Just shoot it off its hinges and it’s open wide. Unfortunately though, the ancient weapon was still with Kirsan the repair bot. Modifying the relict artifact was taking a long time.
I had to find another way. So, first let’s see how to control this door.
Mobile door control mechanism. Chance of making inoperable 37%. Total control chance 12%.
No, I was not going to break open the armored doors. Nor was I going to fry the electronics with a geological analyzer. I didn’t risk trying to mind-control one of the two Dark Faction players either. With such a high-level mage I wouldn’t manage, at least blind and without visual contact. But I could pull it off with the Torturer, even though I knew nothing about this game class. Their counterpart would probably not just stand by timidly and watch as they randomly got up to open the door, though.
So I needed to take control and force the door open. I only had a twelve percent chance, not great... I tossed the remaining skill points into Machine Control, raising it to seventy-six, but the chance only went up to thirteen percent. I tried a couple times but, other than a waste of Magic Points (and quite a hefty one at that), I got nothing. Seemingly the time had come to spend my free statistic points. I had been meaning to take a look at that in my free time and with a cool head, carefully weighing every possible consequence, but this was a time crunch and there was no other way to open the disobedient door.
So then, two points right into Intelligence. That should take that from twenty-three to... that’s right, twenty-six considering the extra point for every two into a statistic higher than 20. Considering the two Intelligence rings I had on, I was now all the way up to thirty-one! Was that really not enough to open a door?
Mobile door control mechanism. Chance of making inoperable 72%. Total control chance 32%.
Thirty-two percent. Better now, even though it was nowhere near guaranteed. I decided to try a couple times and, only if it didn’t work, put points into Intelligence. But I got lucky! I pulled it off on my first try!
Electronics skill increased to level seventy-five!
Machine Control skill increased to level seventy-seven!
Mysticism skill increased to level thirty-one!
The thick armored door opened silently and I immediately walked inside. It was a small room, almost all the space was taken up by a rectangular metal rack. Inside that resilient construction, splayed out with metal cables attached to cuffs on her wrists and ankles was Gerd Tamara, completely naked. Her life bar was down in the red and balancing at two or three percent. She was unconscious. They really worked her over! No part of the leader of the Second Legion’s body was untouched. There were just innumerable bruises and bloody whip marks, as well as burns and electric-shock marks.
The whip just happened to be in the Torturer’s hands as I walked in. She was a short but very muscular bald middle-aged woman and all she was wearing was a blood-streaked leather apron right over her naked body. Her partner was a tall and skeleton-thin young man in a red tunic, a striking contrast to the Torturer. The glow of his sparkling eyes revealed his wizardly nature, and the flickering sparks on the tip of his wand explained the electric shock marks on the prisoner’s body. There were especially many below the stomach.
With extreme difficulty I overcame the desire to immediately kill both these sadists. All that held me back was that these two didn’t even understand why I was mad. In the parallel world, there were no rules requiring humanitarian treatment of prisoners and the Torturer profession was both in demand and respected.
“So then... Who gave you the right to torture her?”
Both prison guards turned toward the voice and stared at me, batting their eyes in surprise. The Torturer came to first, leaning in a deep bow:
“My lord! My Princess! Gerd Avir-Syn gave the order to break the prisoner and prepare her for interrogation.”
“And we were given very little time,” the Pyromancer Mage entered the conversation. “They told us to hurry, because the Paladin would be picked up soon, so we got straight to business, and not always delicately. But there was no risk to life. We had everything under control.”
“What’s more, Gerd Tamara has great regeneration,” the Torturer spoke up again. “Her life bar grows quickly; cuts heal over right before your eyes! You can torture her for a whole day without fear of accidentally killing her! She’s just an ideal victim for levelling my skills!”
I didn’t share the torturer lady’s joy at all. I knew about that for a long time, Tamara told me about it herself. However, as it was turning out, high Constitution came with certain downsides...
“I’ve come for the prisoner. Set her free!”
Failed Authority check!
The prison guards exchanged unconfident glances, neither of them carried out my order. What was more, the Torturer put her whip away, clearly about to replace it with a more serious weapon.
Danger Sense skill increased to level fifty-nine!
I didn’t ask what exactly the dangerous bald-headed woman had for me. Sharply extending my good hand in her direction, I gave a clear order:
“Die!!!”
Not very long ago, at the Geckho spaceport, an experienced teacher gave me a clear demonstration of how this was done. The muscular woman with ash-gray skin gasped, clutched at her heart and collapsed to the ground a lifeless doll. At the same time, Gerd Minn-O made two accurate shots with her laser pistol, sending the Pyromancer Mage to respawn.
Psionic skill increased to level eighty-three!
You have reached level eighty-one!
You have received three skill points.
What had we done? Why did we kill both prison guards? How would we remove the fetters from the prisoner now? In the silence of the cavern, my wayedda’s voice sounded loud and sharp:
“My husband, may I shoot Gerd Tamara? I’ve been dreaming of it a long time. I’ll enjoy it and she’ll respawn in a safe place.”
“Is that safe?” I doubted and stopped the Princess, who was already placing her gun to the splayed-out girl’s forehead. “Most likely, Gerd Tamara’s respawn point is in the Tropics node, which is now under control of the La-Fin Faction. I bet your allies will light up when the hated leader of the Second Legion shows up right in the midst of their camp totally naked and helpless. Beyond that,” I pointed at the many empty syringes on the floor, “Tamara is on some kind of psychotropic. It is possible she was induced to change her respawn point to this room. No, we cannot kill her!”
Minn-O lowered her pistol and checked the corpses one after the next for fallen loot. She was looking for a key, but it wasn’t there.
“Remember when you saw me for the first time?” my wife asked unexpectedly, walking a circle around the metal torture rack. “You know, in the mountain camp in your lands when I was lying on the ground naked and spread-eagled, and Gerd Tamara was standing next to me. If only you knew how I was bubbling with hate at that moment and hoping that, one day, everything would be the other way around! And now I got my wish. I don’t understand why but it just isn’t making me happy. By the way, you’ll find this interesting! Or did you already see this cute little design?”
I walked a circle around the prisoner and saw where Minn-O La-Fin was pointing. On the small of the miniature dark-haired girl’s back there was a small colored tattoo, barely visible due to the many electric burns. It was a cartoony design of a flying gnat carrying a bright flashlight and a sharp saber. And although the character was taken from the famous Russian cartoon Mukha-Tsokotukha[2], it was clearly chosen for a reason. Hrm... I wasn’t expecting that from the severe paladin girl.
“Minn-O, we’re wasting time, we need to do something!” I awkwardly tried to change the topic, but my wife just laughed in reply:
“She likes you, I can see it right away! Oh, look how red you got! Okay, okay, I’ll shut up. I can try to put the pistol into constant beam mode and cut all the cables. But that is going to take some time.”
“I’ve got a better idea! The locks are electromagnetic. Minn-O, look! The light is going out!”
I took out my Prospector scanner and a geological analyzer. It wasn’t easy to do with one arm, so I had to sit on the floor and prop the Scanner up on my knees. Maybe I could get by without the “laptop” part, and just use an analyzer but I wasn’t sure. Seemingly, the burst of energy was triggered only after the tripod synchronized with a scanner. I clenched the geological analyzer between my knees and spread the feet with my good hand. A sharp click rang out and the room was immersed in darkness. The only source of light left was the dim glow from my screen. That whole situation was painfully reminiscent of my first flight on the Shiamiru. All that was lacking was a shout of rage from Captain Uraz-Tukhsh: “Gnnnat!!!”
Behind me I heard a body falling to the floor. It worked!
Scanning skill increased to level forty-four!
But I didn’t even have time to celebrate before I heard angry voices from the dark hallway. Then no more than a second later, the beams of bright flashlights started bouncing on the walls. I saw a few figures in the doorway which, due to the bright light in my eyes, I couldn’t make out. But they recognized me right away.
“What a pleasant surprise, my dear mages!” And I shuddered to recognize the old-man’s voice of the ghastly Gerd Avir-Syn La-Pirez. “We paid for only one prisoner, but not we get three at no extra charge!”
