Vivid Stars Online

The first step was to get out of the room we had sealed ourselves into. While it was possible that there would be nothing waiting for us outside, it was safer to assume that there was an army of robots waiting in ambush.

I tried using my scanner to detect through the walls, however, even in boost mode, it couldn’t penetrate the material making up the walls of the ritual chamber. Given that, all we could do was draw our weapons and prepare for combat.

Unfortunately, there was limited cover within the room. This one didn’t even have lockers like the first one we had encountered, so the only things you could use were the pillars and the throne itself.

Linnea and Adam tried moving into the circle to hide behind the pillars, however, they quickly left feeling incredibly uncomfortable. I found this rather odd since I had entered before I had Psi powers, however in the end I put it down to my class being immune to the effect.

Given that they set up on either side of the door while I used a pillar for cover. With a thought, I reached out for the door and opened it to reveal an ominously empty corridor beyond.

“Huh,” I said as I walked toward the door. “I really thought it would ambush us here.”

“Maybe it doesn’t want to damage the chamber,” Linnea responded with a shrug. “It seemed to be pretty attached to it earlier.”

“Or,” Adam said as he strode over. “It pulled everything back either to defend itself or to block the exit.”

I nodded in thought before continuing. “I guess that makes sense. While this would be a solid ambush point, firing into the chamber would wreck at least one pillar or even the chair itself. It’s quite possible it has a directive that prevents it from even trying that.”

“So it depends on how much of a self-preservation instinct it has then,” Linnea said with a sigh. “If it’s as dutiful as it sounded when talking to us, then it will have at least half of its soldiers on the exit. If not, it might have all of them guarding it.”

“Well, there’s not much we can do about it,” I responded with a shrug. “I’m not leaving without looting as much as I can from the place, and the only way to do that safely is to finish it. Hopefully, it has some of its forces on the exit, that would reduce the difficulty of assaulting the core room.”

With that, our conversation petered off as we began moving back through the network of corridors. This time, we didn’t encounter a single robot as we moved, suggesting that Adam’s thought of them pulling back was correct.

While I knew there was a door that we hadn’t checked in the hangar, I wanted to avoid going that way in case it was full of robots. Instead, we continued exploring the corridors, eventually finding another door that looked to lead deeper into the facility.

We passed many smaller doors that I believed led to other rooms, however, I ignored them for now. While the upgrade to my Item Attunement ability did wonders for its cost, dropping it by half, it still cost energy to open each door. For now, I wanted to save as much as I could for the last battle.

After over an hour of exploring, we encountered a reinforced door that looked like someone had welded additional plating over it.

“Get ready,” I said, before moving back around the corner. “I bet this is it, and who knows what is behind there?”

The door was at the end of a short corridor leading away from a crossroads. This left four potential spots of cover, the two sides of the door and the two corners at the crossroads further back.

Adam immediately moved up to take a position in front of the door. I would usually do the same, however, I was expecting to meet extreme resistance to opening this door. If this was really the entrance to the AI’s lair, then it would be desperate to keep us out.

With that in mind, I wanted to be a little further from the action while opening it. Linnea took a position in the other corner and set up on the ground in sniper mode. With everyone in place, I Attuned to the door and focused my will on opening it.

As I expected, there was furious resistance with the AI trying everything it could to hold the door closed. However, what I hadn’t counted on was the power-up from upgrading my ability to Journeyman. Even with its increased resistance, I found it only a little harder to open than normal.

The door split in the middle at my focus before rapidly opening. Beyond, nearly a dozen robots were revealed, all of them focusing their guns on us. Behind them was a crude metal barricade formed from upturned desks and welded plates.

I could only assume that the AI’s server setup was beyond and that this was its attempt to avoid stray fire destroying something vital.

Linnea opened fire as soon as the first robot came into view, the plasma from her shot spattering across its head. I followed her lead and empowered a shot aimed at the same robot.

The empowered shot formed quicker than ever before and fired only a second after I began focusing on it. The resulting purple ball was smaller than usual, though my Psi Sense told me it was more powerful than ever. Best of all, it also cost only half the energy that it used to.

The bolt shot forward, striking the robot in its chest and blowing it off its feet with the resulting explosion. The robot dragged itself up, ignoring the crater in its chest before the roar of Adam’s shotgun blew it back over. It didn’t get back up after that.

Unfortunately, the enemies had reacted now and were spraying the corridor with plasma fire. I ducked back into cover, furiously trying to think of a way to fight back. With ten robots all shooting at us, they had us completely pinned down.

Desperately, I reached out with my mind, trying to locate the robots. I had a hunch that upgrading Item Attunement should have given me more capabilities as well as simply increasing the power and decreasing the cost. It was time to see if that was true.

After searching for several seconds, I found a robot and began focusing my full attention on it. I could feel the complex array of electronics that controlled it and with a wrench of my mind, I tried to throw it off.

It was hard, extremely hard and I could feel my energy dropping rapidly, however in the end I felt something give. It felt like the robot was inactive now, so I reached out to find another.

I repeated the process on it, then on a second and a third. By the time I had taken out the fifth robot, I was slumped back against the wall with a screaming headache, my energy spent.

“Jared!” Linnea shouted across the hallway. “What happened? Did you get hit?”

“No, tried to take out the robots,” I responded, my voice sounding tired and slurred. “I hope it worked because I’m done.”

I thought that the sound of plasma spattering off the corridor walls had reduced, but I couldn’t be sure.

Thankfully, Linnea peaked around the corridor before responding. “Whatever you did, worked. There are just five of them left. Adam and I can take the rest.” She edged her gun out and took a shot, before yelling something down to Adam.

I couldn’t be sure what it was because everything had started to go dark. I had always stopped using my psionics when the headaches started before and it seemed that had been a good call. A second later, everything faded to black as I lost consciousness.

Groaning, I opened my eyes, trying to ignore my still-pounding head. I could see the ceiling above my head and feel the soft padding of a bedroll below me.

“What happened?” I said, trying to pull myself up into a sitting position.

“You burnt yourself out or something,” Linnea said, her voice sounding concerned. “Here, take this,” she continued, handing me several pills and a cup of water.

I downed them before dragging myself up. Adam and Linnea were standing nearby, looking singed and even outright burnt in many places, but still mostly intact.

“We won,” Adam said with a deep belly laugh. “It wasn’t easy, but two against five is a lot easier than three against ten. All the robots are scrap, though we haven’t moved past the barricade yet. Thought it best we waited for you first.”

“That’s a relief,” I said with a sigh. “I was worried we were goners when that door opened.”

“Yeah,” Linnea said beside me. “Good thing you did your Psi power-up first, we might not have made it otherwise.”

I was going to have to practice with it more soon to see what else I was now capable of. For now, it was time to deal with the AI itself. The painkillers were improving the pain in my head, helped by what I estimated was about twenty minutes of Psi energy regeneration.

It wasn’t enough to put me anywhere near full, however, I wasn’t entirely empty anymore. Note to self, I mused as we moved to the AI core entryway. Don’t run out of Psi energy again. At least not unless it’s with a fight-winning move, I’m a sitting duck afterward.

“So nothing’s happened since you won the fight?” I asked as we walked past eleven destroyed robots. Six of them had obvious holes caused by plasma fire in them, while the over five looked mostly intact yet were just as inert as the others.

“Nope,” Adam said with a shrug. “Either that was all the robots or it's still got them guarding the door. Not sure why it would do that, but perhaps it has some kind of minimum amount it has to allocate to the rest of the base.”

“We figure that if they haven't attacked us yet, then we’re probably not going to be,” Linnea cut in with a shrug. “Hopefully, that means we’ve got time to figure out what to do about the AI. I mean, we can probably just start breaking stuff, but I’m worried that might cause trouble.”

That makes sense, I thought, while responding with a nod. Who knows what might happen if we break a bunch of ancient alien tech? There could be explosions, plasma leaks, or who knows what.

“Let’s keep that as a backup,” I said, trying to shake away thoughts of drowning in coolant. “Maybe we can find a better way first, or perhaps even reason with it now that it’s helpless.”

“I’d rather not,” Adam said, his tone worried. “Who knows what it might do once we move back out into the facility? Better to take it out now and be safe if we can.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said as we began edging around the barricade. It didn’t extend the full width of the room, instead, it left enough space for one of the worker robots to move around on either end.

Beyond was the sight that I’d expected when opening the door. A vast array of servers and other futuristic electronics were set up throughout the room. From the large quantity of flashing green lights, I was pretty sure that the AI was still active, however, it was silent.

“Are you there facility AI?” I asked out loud, at least prepared to try talking to it. I didn’t think it would work on something left to manage a military base, but it cost me nothing to try.

“You are in an unauthorized area,” the voice responded, almost sounding petulant despite its mechanical nature. “Leave or be destroyed.”

“Well, that’s useful,” I said with a sigh before trying to engage it in a more detailed conversation. However, nothing I tried worked, all I got were continued threats of destruction, though nothing ever eventuated.

“Right then,” I said, having given up after more than fifteen minutes of verbally bashing my head against a wall. “Linnea, I don’t suppose you remember how Elana shut down the last one?”

It was a long shot, as I couldn’t remember even half of the actions she’d taken. This was confirmed a moment later as Linnea shook her head in the negative.

Psionics it is then, I thought with a wry grin before settling into rest. I would need my full energy reserves if I was going to take out the AI like I did the robots.

We would be fighting on its home ground and I could only imagine that it would have every advantage.