Андреа Хёст - The Starfighter Invitation

"We need a strategy, do we not?" Arlen said.

I nodded. "If it keeps increasing in strength, broken shields seem almost guaranteed. I think we’re going to have to permanently double-layer the shields, and combine that with the swapping regime we established." I explained to Nova and Silent what we’d done in the third Challenge, and what I wanted now.

"Anticipate failure by putting one person on the inner layer, and another for the outer layer?" Nova asked.

"If the outer drops, do we just sit another outer on it?" Silent asked. "Or try to expand the inner layer to be the outer?"

"Expanding a shield once you’ve set it, that is not so easy," Arlen said, shaking his head. He was speaking English this session, with occasional hesitations on less common words.

"I suspect it’s a skill we might want to develop, though. Shall we do a practice round before we go in, to see if it’ll work?"

"Practice is a good idea," Nova agreed. "But why complicate matters trying to expand the shields? We can just lift them a little higher."

"Better still, if an outer shield is hit or dropped, put up a new outer shield, and then drop and replace the inner shield," Silent said. "Then next round, the person who did the inner shield is responsible for the outer shield, and vice versa."

It proved to be a workable suggestion, and after a quick round of practice, we activated the next Challenge stage.

THE HEART OF MARS

Behind the shadows

Solo or Party

Gauntlet

Gateway series

Length: Thirty minutes (4 of 9)

Core Unit

" Behind the Shadows is a little more dramatic than the first couple of Challenge descriptions," I noted.

"Why is it quests never send us to look behind sunbeams?" Arlen hummed a snatch of melody, the silver helmet form of his active focus not seeming to impede the sound.

Nova shrugged. "Even though it’s clearly training in the guise of a quest, giving us tunnels and lasers without any kind of plot is a weak effort."

"Looks like we’re leaving the narrow path behind, at least," Silent said, as we entered an actual cavern, walls and floor uneven, with numerous obstructions dramatically lit by incongruous lampposts that made me think vaguely of Narnia.

"No sign of laser ports, but no obvious path, either." I hesitated, trying to decide where to head in the wide, boulder-studded space.

"Straight across?" Nova suggested. "And change course if we discover any reason to."

We agreed, but didn’t exactly hurry into the echoing space. The atmosphere was outright creepy, and it didn’t help when, into the pause, came a flutter of sound. Too low for any kind of clarity, it could have been a sigh, or a moan.

"Zombies of Mars?" Silent said, but with a thin quality to his usual drawl.

"Did anyone mention zombies in the discussions about the Challenge series? I thought these lan Challenges were supposed to be watchable."

"Yes, if you know who to watch and when. Those Challenge-views don’t repeat, and most people reporting on this stage and the next are being very vague, outside of warning of harder hitting lasers. Most everyone doing a gateway series wants to be first to qualify for the System Challenge."

"Zombies are not likely to hit as hard as lasers," I said.

"They could crawl under the shield," Arlen said, bouncing lightly on his feet.

I was on inner shield duty, and part of my attention was locked into lan, but I still found myself looking for the Renba I’d been studiously ignoring since waking. Five of them, clustered near the ceiling, waiting for something to cut us down. We hadn’t spent enough time talking about what to do if we were injured, not killed—whether to retreat or run on—but now didn’t seem a good moment to broach the subject.

"Let’s get moving," Nova said, and we shuffled forward, then broke into a slow trot, picking a path over the uneven ground.

No laser bolts struck, no zombies clutched at ankles, no exits presented themselves at the far side of the cavern.

"What now?" Silent asked, surveying the protrusions and hollows to each side.

"Work our way around and hope we stumble across it?" I said.

"They are very literal with their behind the shadows , it seems," Nova said, sounding more amused than worried.

As we turned right, I caught that whisper of sound again, but this time I hadn’t even time to turn my head before the now-familiar buzzing of laser bolts. Arlen had the outer shield, and let out his breath as a volley of multiple bolts struck.

"Not good," he said, as we turned trot into dash. "Barely—"

Another volley took down his shield, two of the bolts hitting mine.

"Behind this boulder!" I said, thankful I’d managed to keep my shield up, and sure I wouldn’t be able to sustain another hit.

Trying to maintain a shield over a group hurling itself into cover wasn’t the easiest thing I’d done, but we were fortunate I kept mine more-or-less in position, because the source of the blasts followed us around the curve of stone and fired again, sending chips of rock flying, and hitting my shield once again before Silent, next in the rotation, managed to get a fresh shield over the top as mine dropped.

"What now?" Silent gasped, as a floating, silvery drone came into clear view, and his shield took a full barrage.

"Keep circling," I said, as Imoenne managed to form her shield beneath Silent’s. "Find exit. Run into it."

"Nova Smash," said Nova, in a firm little voice.

This was spectacularly accompanied by the drone being pounded into the ground, and then exploding.

"What the hell?" Silent said it, but the rest of us surely thought it.

"We’re supposed to be able to lan duel, so I figured we could hit things with our shields," Nova said.

"Nice," I said, appreciatively.

"The genius move," Arlen added. "Now it is paste, instead of us."

"And we should keep moving," Nova said. "There might be others."

I turned again to survey the uneven outer walls, looking for something that might be an exit passage, but Arlen was still focused on the smashed drone.

"There is something odd there" he said. "Can we move near?"

We obediently shifted toward the still-smoking slag. The drone had exploded violently enough to pit the rock around it.

"Moving under a shield umbrella cuts down on our mobility," Silent noted. "We should practice splitting into groups in the next safe zone."

"If we—" I paused, because I caught what Arlen was pointing to, well hidden in the gloom between two boulders behind the drone. "A stair?"

"It was, perhaps, guarding," Arlen said. "Just to think of the hours spent if we avoided the machine and searched the outer wall."

"Let’s get going before something else comes along," Silent said.

"Anyone bring a torch?" I asked, but it wasn’t too bad getting down—there was a hint of light once we were looking directly down the stairwell, and the only real difficulty was not hitting shield edges against things when descending. After that was a straight, blast-free corridor out to another staging area.

"Break and snacks?" I suggested.

"Why is it I feel so tired, for such a short walk?" Arlen asked. "We have hardly come any way at all."

"Adrenaline." Nova led the way to the nearest Soup outlet. "Along with maintaining the shields. Fortunately these sessions seem designed to be short—win or lose."

I was finding Nova a very interesting person. With a Core Unit that looked mid-teens, the magical girl styling, and a very self-assured attitude, I couldn’t help but speculate over what she was like out in the world. For all I’d told myself a few times that out-of-game couldn’t really matter in Dream Speed , the whole concept of a Core image, of a self that matched who you felt you were, drew me into questions of what of a person was really like. Was I more truly myself inside Dream Speed or out of it?