Андреа Хёст - The Starfighter Invitation

Did I regard Dio as a friend? Dio wasn’t a fledgling Cycog, but a Construct some of the time, and someone else at others. Claiming that someone else as a friend seemed outright foolish. Fun to talk to, sure, but not anything like trustworthy. Teasing, uncomfortably insightful, probably a very nice floating ball of light, but someone whose agenda felt more like finding out what made me tick rather than being a team.

"Did you see my Dream Speed design?" I said, rather than keep poking at the question. "It’s been selling enough that I think I’ll make this month’s rent."

"Not only seen it, but bought a shirt," my father said.

My mother looked pleased. "You are doing well? But it was only a matter of time."

"I’m trying to balance taking advantage of the momentum with wanting to bury myself in the game—I guess I’m lucky they have a lock-out rule."

I settled down to picking an EVA Challenge that would suit us, trying to juggle all the things I wanted to fit into my schedule. Eighty hours a day mightn’t be enough.

After trash-collecting the stars, returning to the gauntlet series felt constricting and dull. No view, and only the prospect of being hammered with blaster fire to look forward to.

Of course, the point of the series was clearly to prove a certain level of lan strength before attempting the System Challenge. A group of Rank Tens would probably stroll through it. I wouldn’t even have started this series yet, if I’d realised what it involved, and would have postponed the rest in favour of level grinding if not for my bet with Dio.

Waiting next to the mural, I played spot-the-alien among the colourful tiles, noticing that in each new mural they had changed their stance along with adding a new member, but not shifted their position relative to each other. I tried to remember the names of the species, and then found a way to look the whole primary set up. Darashi, Vssf, Ah Ma Ani, Shree, Kzah, Embyde. And Llura.

"So what does Llura actually mean, Dio?"

[[Medium.]]

I looked up at tem, but te just glowed inexpressively. "It’s a size designation? Do the other names mean large and small?"

[[Darashi is a combination of small and fast, but most of the other names are closer to the names the species call themselves. Llura is more complicated than size. Not the fastest. Not the slowest. Not the largest. Not the smallest. Not the smartest.]]

"So it’s an insult?"

[[Is that an insult?]]

"Hm." I didn’t know. "We’re the jack-of-all-trades species?"

[[Type Threes do like to run around calling themselves adaptable.]]

"Medium."

"Hey Kaz."

I turned to smile at Silent, then tried not to visibly react to his lowering frown. It was so weird to see my guildies. "You look annoyed."

Silent shrugged, and relaxed the straight line of his mouth. "Remember how I dropped anon to show off my new rank to the guild? Ever since, even though I put it back up after a few minutes, I’ve had a swarm of tells wanting me to join groups. Most people will never get one of these first-to-rank achievements, but being first to unlock the System Challenge seems more attainable, so everyone’s trying to build the highest-ranked teams possible."

Silent had made Rank Nine while I’d been gambolling in an EVA suit—a rank only around three hundred players had managed so far. I was fairly sure I was at least a 7 now, but was putting off ranking until the gauntlet was done. The fact that it bothered me to be the weakest member of the group meant I’d remained defiantly non-anon, with my Rank Six out for everyone to see.

"Think we’ll lose any of the others to poaching?" I asked. I’d seen guilds shatter under the strain of top members being siphoned off by more active raiders.

"Nope. These Challenges aren’t just a numbers game: there’s a group dynamic that’s just as important as strength. I don’t get the feel anyone in our group is going to get us killed running wildly ahead Leroy Jenkinsing, and no-one’s caught up in proving themselves the boss. The others will appreciate that just as much as I do."

"I invited Nova to the guild before she logged, but she only said she’d think about it."

"I’d probably wait longer joining a guild here myself. Heck of a different experience. What do you make of the next Challenge description?"

I hadn’t checked. " Where the Meadow Weeps, and the Dawn Blooms ? A meadow in a cave? Maybe mushrooms?"

"Hope not. I’ve fought a few too many fungus-zombies in recent years."

"Fungus-zombies?"

"Hey Nova. Just speculating on what comes next." Silent lifted a hand in greeting, and then extended the gesture to Arlen and Imoenne as well. "Everyone good to go? Or do we need a strat talk before going in?"

"Find something that is liquid and apricot-coloured?" Arlen suggested. "They are not very complex, these Challenges."

"Just hitting harder each time," Silent agreed.

"Unless we can invent more efficient shields, I’m not sure there is more to this than shield and survive until exit," Nova said.

"Anyone notice the estimated time for this stage?" I said.

"Oh, hey, I didn’t see that," Silent said. "I wonder if that means a maze, a really hard exit to find, or something else?"

THE HEART OF MARS

Where the Meadow Weeps, and the Dawn Blooms.

Solo or Party

Gauntlet

Gateway series

Length: Two hours (6 of 9)

Core Unit

We went in triple-shielded, with two over the whole group, and one extra out front. After the traditional narrow entry corridor, the area opened up completely, and there we stopped. Not out of fear of blasters, but in awe.

A meadow beneath the stars. Three tiers of meadows, separated by pearlescent rises of ornamentally sculpted stone that channelled great cascades of water into complex and intricate shapes. Monumental, glorious, glimmering.

Silent, typically, was first to find something to say: "Is two hours just how long they expect it’ll take us to walk across this place?"

"It’s set up so that you can’t possibly just keep five shields active the whole time," Nova noted. "Exhausting."

"Perhaps we are to climb the waterfall?" Arlen suggested.

From this distance, in a half-light sourced more from the terraced wall than the stars, stairs weren’t obvious—and would be a slippery proposition if they were somehow woven into that criss-crossing fall. The area was almost as wide as it was long—must be in an outlying crevice of the great Chasma Marineris—and empty of anything much except grass, wildflowers, and the towering rise of falling water: a concave curve of it, rather than a straight line. If there were blaster ports, they’d be extremely distant, waiting for us at the walls…or hidden in grass. Even if nothing happened, it would take most of our allotted time to reach the top.

"I’d guess at a good half hour walk to the first tier, and however long it takes us to climb it," I said, studying the decoration visible on the main rim of the first waterfall: flowers, birds, leaves and a wide variety of symbols. "Not possible to do all three tiers in two hours, even if nothing shoots us. Uh, not unless we use skids, which I don’t recommend. So this must be all the rest of the stages."

"A walk in the park," Silent said, with forced cheer. "Why does something so lovely feel so creepy?"

"Because we’re waiting for it to shoot at us?" Nova took a single step forward, and stopped. "I’m sure I could shield myself the whole way, but probably not if I’m constantly pounded by blasts."

"A lot depends on whether we get that warning noise," I said. "How about we take turns double shielding until we get shot by something, and if the blaster is still making that buzzing noise, we switch to taking turns with a single shield, but everyone else tries to throw up an additional shield when we hear the warning."