Vivid Stars Online

I reacted quickly to the Spider's appearance, empowering a shot with Psi energy and firing toward the leftmost one. It fell to the ground with a smoking crater in its head and from the corner of my eye I could see Linnea had felled one as well.

Then the remaining four were on us in a swarm of legs and fangs. The initial charge bowled me over, pinning me under a pair of crystalline bodies. One bit deep into my left shoulder, covering most of my body. The other ravaged my right arm, keeping it out of commission.

Their bodies were smooth and cool against mine. They had the feeling of crystal, yet were nearly as soft as flesh. I struggled against their weight, however, with no points in Brawn, I didn’t have a chance.

Instead, I reached out with my mind, feeling for the dagger at my hip. I’d Attuned to it just a little earlier and I could still feel traces of that energy with my Psi Sense. Breaking the Attunement with my gun, I moved it over to the dagger and called it into my left hand.

While the position was awkward, the height of my body formed a small space between the spider and the ground. I used that space to perform a short stab, straight up into its torso.

The Beast screeched as the supernaturally sharp blade pierced into its hide. I stabbed again and again until it finally reared back, giving me space to maneuver. My right hand was still trapped, so I dropped the dagger and swapped my Attunement back to the gun.

Within moments, I was holding the pistol in my left hand, aiming up at gushing wounds in the spider’s chest. I empowered another shot, taking it straight in one of the holes with a burst of purple plasma.

While this dropped me well below fifty percent of my energy reserves, it destroyed the Beast’s chest and showered me with a mixture of ichor and plasma. I groaned in pain at the spatters, but ignored them for now.

Instead, I twisted to the right, aiming over my body toward the spider biting deep into my right arm. I’d never been good with my off-hand, however, when the target was so large and so close, it was impossible to miss.

I fired a third empowered shot, wincing as a headache began forming. It was worth it, however, as the creature’s head exploded, showering me once more. This time, I screamed and desperately tried to pull myself out from under the corpses.

It was still hard going, however, I could escape now they were no longer actively resisting. Pulling myself to my feet, I began searching the room for my companions. Linnea was on the ground, the barrel of her gun holding back a spider’s fangs. While her strength was impressive, it looked like her arms were slowly bending under the strain.

Out the door, Elana was once more being wrapped in webbing by the last spider. It looked like the AI was still intent on capturing her alive. With a silent apology to her, I stumbled over to the spider attacking Linnea.

I was sure that if the AI hadn’t killed Elana yet, it wouldn’t do so in the next minute or so. Linnea didn’t have the same protection. Unfortunately, my right arm was hanging limply by my side, whatever poison the spider fangs held having paralyzed it.

My left shoulder wasn’t much better, I only had a small range of movement with my left arm. It was enough once I reached the Beast’s side. This time, I fired a barrage of normal shots into it, worried about my growing headache.

It shrieked and reared back off Linnea, giving her room to bring her rifle up and blow its head off. A moment later, she was on her feet, throwing the corpse off with far more ease than I had.

She turned, aimed, and fired in a single movement, blowing the head off the spider enveloping her sister. Then she was gone, rushing over to cut Elana free.

I turned to face the room, wary of any further threats. All I got was an announcement warning us we had fifteen minutes remaining before the base would self-destruct. The AI must have run out of resources at last. It didn’t even seem interested in talking, and I grinned as I imagined it sulking.

It took nearly a minute for Elana to be freed, after which she rushed into the room and began examining the equipment. I left her to it, slumping down to the ground as I groaned in pain.

Linnea did a quick patrol of the room, checking every nook and crevice for danger. Then she jogged over to me, pulling her pack out to administer first aid.

“You alright Jared?” She asked, a concerned tone in her voice.

“Peachy,” I gasped in response. “Do we have any antivenom in there? The paralysis is messing with my lungs.” It felt so much worse than the first time, perhaps because of the double dose I'd just received.

She nodded, pulling a large pill from her first aid kit. I swallowed it with a bit of water from her canteen, sighing in relief as it worked only a couple of minutes later. Whatever was in this space aid medicine was good stuff.

Linnea sprayed some wound sealant over the puncture marks while the last of the paralysis faded. While it didn't heal me by any measure, it was enough to get me up and moving again.

I glanced over to check on Elana, seeing that she was flitting from console to server stack. “Do you think she’s going to be able to disable it?” I whispered over to Linnea.

“I hope so,” she whispered back. “Elly’s always been good with technology, combined that with her class skills, and she’s got as good a shot as anyone would. Still,” she finished with a shrug,” if we die, we die. We can deal with the death penalties if needed.”

I nodded, processing her response. While dying would suck, I would probably have traded it for getting my first Psionic ability anyway. It had already proven to be a massive help, and I felt like I’d only scratched the surface.

It was also interesting that Linnea didn’t seem that worried about dying. While I didn’t want to pry, I surmised that meant her issues were primarily to do with being stuck somewhere in the game.

I could relate to that, it would be horrible to be trapped somewhere unable to leave or even log out. Perhaps one day she’ll feel like she can open up about it, I mused. We’ve only known each other for a few weeks, after all.

Despite knowing that I would survive the explosion, I became more and more nervous as the minutes ticked down, with Elana still rushing from one place to the next. There was just something about the impending doom of the situation that I couldn’t let go of.

At least my headache faded after about ten minutes. Noted, I thought with relief once it was gone. Using too much Psi energy at once has consequences. I would have to be careful about that in the future.

Finally, with just three minutes left to go, Elana looked up from her work. “OK, I’ve found a way to shut it off, you’re probably not going to like it though.”

I blinked in surprise, glad that she’d found a way, but worried about her tone. “Why?” I asked, hanging on her response.

Shrugging, she continued. “It’s an emergency wipe of the entire system. From what I can tell, it destroys the operating system, permanently wiping any data on the computers. The catch is it will also take out the power grid. With no power, all those closed doors will be locked down tight.”

“If you were hoping to loot the place,” she finished with a sigh. “Well, this will make it impossible.”

Linnea broke in a moment later. “If it’s an emergency measure, wouldn’t the self-destruct continue? I would have thought the two would go hand in hand?”

Elana shook her head, her face breaking into a tired smile. “Nope. It's two separate systems. From what I figure, sometimes you want to blow the whole place sky high and sometimes you just want to lock it down so you can come back later. If you had a copy of the operating system, you could get it operational again without too much effort.”

It wasn’t really much of a decision. As much as I’d been hoping to take everything I could from this place, we wouldn’t be able to loot it if we were dead. “Do it,” I said with a smile, trying to show that I was alright with the situation.

“We can’t do anything if we’re dead,” I finished.

Nodding, Elana pulled a massive switch inside the exposed panel she was fiddling with.

An electronic screech echoed through the room, then everything went dark. “You weren’t kidding about everything shutting down,” I said with a laugh. “I wonder why the AI did nothing, though.”

“I think it was pretty limited, actually,” Elana responded. “Once it had failed and was out of resources, it didn’t have any reason to communicate with us. If the Arkathians had made it advanced enough to really think outside of its programming, we would have had a much harder time with it.”

I suppose makes sense, I mused as I flicked on my watch’s torch mode. It certainly wasn’t anywhere near as dangerous as the ones you see in the movies.

“OK,” I said. “We can loot this room, at least. Just remember, we can’t remove anything that’s part of the actual facility. The government will probably be OK with us killing the AI and the computers since they would have been an issue, but we can’t push it any further.”

Once I was sure the other two understood the limitations, we split up to search the room. Unfortunately, it was pretty barren, as if the inhabitants had taken most loose objects with them.

In the end, we found one tablet-style computer and a collection of electrical gadgets that Elana assured me were intended to be separate from the systems in the room. We also grabbed the cores from the six Spider Beasts. These felt odd to my senses, almost fake or artificial.

I wonder if that’s how the AI could control them. If they were some kind of artificial Beasts created by the Arkathian military, then I could see that happening. It’s crazy to think that they were around all this time, though. Maybe in some kind of stasis?

Whatever the actual explanation was, we wouldn’t be able to find it with the computers wiped. Instead, we moved back through the facility to check on the temple room. I hoped it would still be accessible since we’d left the doors open.

We checked two other rooms as we moved past them. As Elana had predicted, they were locked tight, the panels unresponsive to anything she tried. While I would have liked to search them, without the power or software required, opening them would be almost impossible. It wasn’t like we could bust through military-grade plating after all.

Luckily, the temple room was still as open as we had left it. I was interested to see that the Psi energy within was still swirling around in the same patterns as before. It proved that it was entirely separate from the facility’s normal systems.

What I was really here for, however, was the row of lockers I’d seen when I first searched the room. With the danger passed, it was time to see if they held anything good.

Of the dozen that were against the wall, I found only two still held items. Though thinking about it, it’s more surprising that there is anything at all. I wonder if that means the Arkathians left in a hurry?

Whatever the cause, those ancient aliens’ loss was my gain. The first locker that held anything contained a pair of pants, of all things. They were made of a smooth metallic fabric with no sign of wear or decay.

They felt tough, like armor, and I slipped them on for a test run. At first, they fit poorly, being far too wide in the waist and short on the legs. A moment later, however, I felt a small pulse of energy with my Psi Sense.

The pants morphed against my skin, thinning at the waist and lengthening in the legs. By the end of the process, they were almost hanging over my shoes. I had a hunch this meant that the total volume hadn’t changed, instead having just moved around.

“Neat,” I said out loud with a grin. I could certainly use some leg armor, given how many beasts like to go for the legs, I finished internally.

The other locker had a large silver cuff or armlet. It was about five inches long and almost as round as my biceps. Arkathian script gleamed along its length, perhaps hinting at its intended purpose.

For now, I slipped that into my pack, I would decipher it when I had time later. Last, we moved back out toward the hanger, where we grabbed the robot arms we’d looted earlier and the first spider's core.

“SO,” I said as I started at the now dead elevator. “How are we going to get out now that this doesn’t work?”

“I figure we can use the maintenance shafts,” Elana responded with a shrug. “The fact that you could access them earlier shows that they don’t have the same level of security as the rooms. We should be able to get them open with a little effort.”

Fuck, I thought as I stared at her in horror. This is going to suck so much.