Vivid Stars Online

That night I left the Guild sneakily, given how bad at that I was I didn’t even need to try and be obvious, I just was. Luckily, the monorails still ran through the night, an advantage of having an automated system that didn’t need drivers.

Soon I was standing outside of Brian’s landing pad, where his VTOL was prepped and ready to go. He hadn’t been particularly happy about the late-night trip, however, he agreed once I offered to double his normal fee.

Felisa was already waiting by the time I arrived. She looked more than ready, having added a pack nearly as big as she was to the rest of her gear. Elana and Linnea arrived shortly afterward, with Elana carrying a second drone.

“Hey Jared,” she greeted with a wave. “I set this up for you. It’s the drone you fixed from the facility with a couple of modifications. I thought you might want the extra firepower.”

I hadn’t even thought of that, we would likely need all the firepower we could get. With Technokinesis being so new, I still wasn’t taking full advantage of it and that was something that needed to change.

“Thanks, Elana,” I said wholeheartedly, before greeting Linnea with a kiss beside her. Elana whistled and laughed at that, while Linnea only responded in kind before breaking off with a smile.

With us all there, we took off, winging our way toward the northernmost mountain we had reached so far. From there it would take us two weeks to get to the final mountain range, then at least another week more before we would reach the final facility.

This one was nestled into a valley deeper into the mountain range. While it looked like there was a mountain pass of some kind, we would likely have to ascend a fair way and then descend again before we finally reached it.

Upon being dropped off, we stopped for a few minutes to discuss the likelihood of an attack before moving on. While I thought our enemy would attack at the last minute again, after following us to the facility, Felisa was of the opposite opinion.

“They already tried that, and it failed,” she responded with a shake of her head. “I doubt they will risk you picking up more people before making the final ascent. If they have managed to track us so far, I would suspect an attack out in the wilds.”

“If it was me,” she continued with a small shrug. “I would attack roughly three-quarters of the way there. By that point, they will have been able to plot our course to figure out where we are going in general, and we will be far away from any potential help.”

I blinked a bit in surprise at that before responding. “How would they find the actual facility, then? Just knowing the mountain range it’s in would still leave them weeks of searching at the best. While I’m sure they would find it eventually, they must be worried about the Duchess retaliating before then.”

Felisa stared at me as if I was stupid. “They will capture and interrogate you, of course. Even if they don’t have a mentally focused Psion, they would probably just force you to take them there. Either torture or threatening your companions would work, eventually.”

That left a cold shiver down my spine. I’d been thinking that I could always just return to life we if got attacked and I was killed. The same for Elana and Linnea as well. This, however, was a stark reminder of how serious everyone here is.

Surely, though, they wouldn’t let them actually torture us in the game. Right? I thought with a shudder. While I really wanted to believe that, somehow I couldn’t bring myself to do so. Not with my realistic everything had been so far.

“Oh,” I finally said. “Well, we’d better be prepared for that, then. And if they do capture anyone we're giving them the information, it's not worth being tortured over. Or dying,” I finished, tacking on that last part since Felisa didn’t know we would just come back.

She didn’t look happy about that, however, she eventually had no choice but to agree with the rest of us. With that settled, we began following the route that I had planned out in advance.

With four of us, plus two drones worth of firepower, fighting the Beasts along the way was almost too easy. It did at least give me a chance to watch Felisa in action, though.

As I had surmised earlier, she was a close combat fighter, one that used a very similar Psionic power to one of the wolves I had fought at the last rift. She would suddenly flash forward, almost looking like she had teleported, before delivering brutal strikes with her Psi sword.

She clearly had some method of boosting its damage as well. While most of the time she would just strike normally, occasionally her blade would glow a bright gold color before cutting a Beast in half.

I was very glad that she was on my side if this was how dangerous she was in light combat. I certainly wasn’t using all my tricks against these Beasts so I doubted she was either.

The trip also gave me a chance to test out the limitations of Technokinesis. In particular, I was able to find the limit of what it could control. It appeared to be based on something having been artificially modified, or crafted if you would.

I couldn’t attune to a random stick or stone and teleport it around like I used to be able to with Item Attunement, however, carving one of the sticks suddenly allowed me to use it. It was an odd restriction until I realized that even a carved stick or stone was technology, though extremely primitive.

Luckily, this was the only downside I found due to the change from Item Attunement to Technokinesis, and it was a minor one at that. While there would likely be some situations where moving natural material would be handy, most of the time I was only interacting with things that it broadly acknowledged as technology.

While the Beasts posed little threat, it was still an extremely trying trip due to the constant threat of an attack from our hidden enemy. While I thought Felisa’s timeframe was reasonable, there was still a good chance they could choose any time to launch the attack.

It led to all of using become rather paranoid, with me in particular almost always glued to the readout from my watch. It should be able to pick up any groups moving in on us, so I felt that it was my duty to watch it as often as possible.

The worst parts were the nights. A night attack would be the most devastating against us with at least half the group asleep, so naturally, it was the tactic I expected them to use. It was also one that we didn’t have a great defense against.

We tried to sleep light with weapons close to hand, however, I always feared that it wouldn’t be enough. It was several days into the second week that my fears were realized.

I was asleep in the tent I now shared with Linnea when a screaming voice echoed through my listless dreams. Having been on edge for over a week now, it was enough to drag me awake in an instant.

The crack of plasma fire echoed through the camp as I came to my senses, sending a rush of adrenaline through me. I almost jumped to my feet before Linnea dragged me back down, gesturing to the smoking holes in the side of our tent.

“Stay down,” she whispered, barely audible over the cacophony outside. “They must be firing into the camp, hoping to take us down.”

I nodded, before summoning my weapons with Technokinesis. I had taken to sleeping in my nano weave armor, which turned out to be surprisingly comfortable, so with that, I was ready to go.

I could see Linnea donning her armor out of the corning of my eye and I gestured that I would go out first. Drawing my gun, I peeked out of the corner of my tent to find nothing but blackness.

Despite the fact that there should have been an almost full moon, the entire campsite was in complete darkness. I didn’t even need my Psi sense screaming at me that it was unnatural, the fact that the moon was somehow still lighting up the inside of our tent was more than enough for that.

It’s like it’s blocking sight itself, rather than light, I mused as I began crawling out into the open. And the effect doesn't pass through objects, even just the tent fabric blocks it. I didn’t know if this was something Felisa or the enemy had done, but for now, it was working to my advantage.

Instead of being gunned down by whoever was attacking the camp, I was able to crawl to the edge of the darkness as shots flew overhead. With a thought, I summoned the drone to myself as I neared the edge and sent it out first with orders to fire on any enemies.

It had taken a bit of work, however between Elana and I we had managed to set the four of us up as friendlies in the drone’s data banks. That greatly simplified the matter of controlling it, as I could just order it to attack anyone it didn’t recognize.

I gave it five seconds to draw fire before I jumped to my feet and sprinted out of the darkness. With no real idea of what I would find, I focused on putting as much speed on as possible, not stopping until I made it behind some kind of cover.

Shots sizzled past behind me as I made for the first tree I could see. The forest we were passing through contained massive trees with large gaps between them. They would provide good cover for a firefight like this.

It seemed I hadn’t been the first person to think of this as I came face to face with a camo-clad man as I came around the edge of the tree. He looked just as surprised as I was and for a moment, we just stared at each other.

Then he tried to raise his rifle while I lunged forward and summoned my Psi blade to my hand. At this range, knife beat gun as I plunged the empowered blade deep into his chest. He collapsed back with a groan, giving me some breathing room to work out what the hell was going on.

A glance around the edge of the tree gave me a disturbing sight. There were at least a dozen guys approaching the camp in a half circle. The only thing that seemed to be slowing them down was a reluctance to move into the area of darkness.

Worse was the massive, twelve-foot figure behind them. It looked to be some kind of giant robot or mech armed with what looked to be a plasma machine gun on each arm. Occasionally it fire a burst into the darkness around the camp, however for the most part it simply watched from the rear.

Fucking hell, I thought as I carefully slid back into cover. So much for not being able to bring many troops to bear in a short period. Not even hesitating for another second, I grabbed the emergency beacon that Felisa had provided me shortly after we left.

It was the one promised by the Duchess, and it should call down several squads of soldiers in drop pods. I pulled up the little glass screen covering a button before hitting it and waiting expectantly.

I wasn’t entirely sure what I was expecting to happen, but the words “Error: Jamming detected” being spoken in a mechanical voice were certainly not it.

Fuck, I thought as I stared at the seemingly useless device. Somehow, outnumbered and split up, we were going to have to win this fight on our own.