The Outlaw (Phantom Server: Book #2) (30 page)

That would have to suffice. Now I could simultaneously control fifteen nanite colonies.

The nanites that had answered Liori’s Call had split into several groups. The sensors of my Synaps had already chosen several drones as targets, selecting them as “objects suitable for utilization”.

I was still bound hand and foot. The Dargians stayed put next to my cage, arguing. Could they be haggling over me?

Replication,
I sent a mental command to the nanites.

The air stirred as they streamed toward the drones.

The sky above the square lit up. Clouds of incandescent Molecular Mist swirled, forming fiery vortices in the air. The unbearable heat set the slavers’ tents on fire. Dargians rushed out, hissing and squawking, waving their arms and peering around themselves, uncomprehending, in search of the mysterious attacker.

Liori had taken control of twelve nanite colonies. The girl’s shadowy silhouette appeared amid the furious but disoriented slave traders. They recoiled, scattering in all directions; someone opened fire on the figure but the bullets spun through thin air, wailing as they ricocheted off the cliffs.

So this was her new replication matrix!

The thirteenth nanite colony formed a Plasma Lash generator, giving Liori access to mine. The nanites that formed her body moved denser together. Thin threads of fire lashed across the square, cutting through the bars of the nearest cages, then showered the façade of a squat building that apparently served as a warehouse. The door exploded in flames; sharp fragments of limestone hissed through the air like shrapnel; the flimsy masonry began to crumble.

Liori’s outline dissolved in the air only to reappear briefly next to my cage. She sliced through my chains and disappeared again, leaving the three Dargians writhing in agony.

Vandal shrank into the back wall of his cage just in time. Ribbons of fire slashed through the bars which clanged to the floor in several smoldering pieces.

The slave traders froze, deep in shock. You shouldn’t forget that they worshipped the Founders. As they had no idea of nanite control, they viewed everything that was happening as a miracle, intimidating and awesome.

Liori materialized amid the ruins of the warehouse atop the lime-powdered heaps of loot. Several micro nuclear battery clips rose into the air, only to be immediately slashed by yet more fiery threads.

Vandal was already out. Time for me to leave my little hidey hole, too. I shouldered the lockless door open.

A well-equipped slaver leapt out, blocking my way. Apparently, he wasn’t as religious as the others: I ducked his burst of fire just in time and attacked him with my nanites.

System Failure! The squat cargonite-clad Dargian lost his balance and collapsed, his servodrives paralyzed, his weapons dead.

I activated Object Replication and felt the warm ribbed handle of the Plasma Lash in my hand. In one merciless swing I slashed through his armor, sending the slaver to his respawn point, then looked around myself.

Foggs had already escaped from his cage and gotten hold of the nearest Dargian, using him as a shield. A hail of bullets peppered the body, splattering green blood everywhere.

A squadron of combat drones was heading for us from the direction of the bombed-out defense point. The mechanics busy restoring it must have heard the explosions and hurried over. They couldn’t use the collapsed tunnel that connected the site to the slavers’ camp so they had to take a detour around the cliffs. I could see their squat figures amid the smoke trailing over the ground.

Liori and I attacked simultaneously.

I hit the drones with Critical Failure. Two of them lost control and careened into the cliffs in balls of fire. The third was still hovering overhead, spinning round until Liori sliced through it with her Plasma Lash.

The slave traders wavered. As I’d said, the Founders cult was extremely strong among them; even their science was a mixture of knowledge and mysticism.

The sight of the ephemeral nanite-replicated girl, shadowy but lethal, plunged them into Deadly Terror — a mass debuff! I’d never seen anything like it in Phantom Server before. Instead of putting up desperate resistance as I’d expected, the Dargians lost it and scattered in all directions. Some of them headed for the boiled-out lake but most hurried toward the fragment of the ancient space station.

* * *

I caught my breath and contacted Novitsky. “What’s going on over there?”

“The Dargians have all left! They’re running for the camp! Zander, what’s going on? My status has updated!”

“You mean you’re not a Prisoner anymore?”

“No! Only I can’t remove these shackles.”

“I’m gonna send someone over to you in a minute.”

Vandal walked over to me, lugging a full gear kit. He handed it to me while glaring sideways at the space station fragment that had crashed here eons ago, molten into the cliffs.

“That’s where the slavers have gone. Will we have to smoke them out?”

A cloud of nanites whirled up next to me, materializing as Liori.

Vandal eyed her with wary admiration, reluctant to ask who she was or where the hell she’d come from.

Foggs was breaking the locks on the remaining cages, sending the freed prisoners toward the heaped-up gear.

“Think I’m gonna give him a hand,” Vandal didn’t ask anything. He probably thought I’d tell him myself when the time was right.

“Are they afraid of me?” Liori made her nanites even denser to help me gear up. Now she looked perfectly real.

“They’ll get used to it.”

“Cool battle, eh?” she forced a smile, trying to behave nonchalantly. Still, I could see that the uncertainty was getting to her.

She glanced at my Physical Energy indicator. “You can’t support two neuromatrices for very long,” she said softly. “I’m killing you. You’ll have to make up your mind, I’m afraid.”

“I think my Physical Energy has stabilized. You and I, we’re a great team.”

“Don’t kid yourself,” nanite tears glistened in her eyes. “You keep leveling up. Very soon my abilities will cease being unique for you. You won’t need me,” now she spoke like a gamer.

“We’ll find a solution, I promise. But your independence isn’t it,” I said firmly. “We need to get out of here and return to the ship. Until then, let’s just not talk about this anymore, okay?”

“Okay,” she pulled herself together. “What can I do now?”

“Do you think you could study the Dargian defense point?”

“Absolutely. It’s within my range.”

“I’d like you to scan it for me and liberate Novitsky and the others. Once you save the scanner files, I want you to dismantle the crystal.

“I love you,” Liori whispered.

She dissolved into a cloud of nanites and disappeared in the dark.

* * *

Foggs walked over to me. “I’ve made a new group,” he pointed at the prisoners.

Goaded by Vandal, these ‘colonial troopers’ had already picked up their weapons and gear. Still, they were admittedly a sorry sight.

“You don’t mind, do you?” Foggs asked, albeit after the fact. “We can’t leave them here, surely!”

“Any experienced players?”

“A few. With these authenticity levels everybody’s in shock, as you can well imagine. You know what I think? We need to mop up this thing,” he pointed at the crashed station fragment, “and hold it until help arrives. What if I give these guys a chance to feel human again? Can we kick the slavers out of there?”

I double-checked the liberated crowd. There must have been about a hundred of them. “Very well. You take command.”

“And you? Aren’t you coming?”

“I have an urgent business to attend to.”

Foggs gave me a calm nod. Those traits of his character which I could have only guessed at before had manifested themselves quickly and unambiguously now. He was composed, confident and curt. He must have been a raid or even a clan leader.

“I’m off, then?” he asked.

“Good. Do it, man.”

Somewhere along the road, we’d all become consumed by
real
emotions. We’d left behind the beautiful virtual worlds, safe and non-committal, where our feelings smoldered without either expiring nor bursting into flames.

* * *

Once they'd left me alone, I didn’t waste my time. I checked the gutted camp in search of a suitable position and set up a few scanners that would warn me in case of any approaching danger. Then I sat on an upended crate, leaned my back against the cliff and closed my eyes.

The model of the mysterious artifact unfolded before me, based on the files Liori had forwarded me.

I needed to know what was going on. Why did our every step in Phantom Server trigger mortal dangers with irreversible effects?

What was it that Liori had found out before she’d taken the plunge and gone digital? I still had no idea how she’d managed to imprint her identity matrix into a gaming object which was nothing more than a binary code?

The model looked rather ungainly: three rings nesting within each other. They were interlinked and covered with a complex pattern of pictograms. My semantic processor had already commenced the translation process but it was going to take some time. Those in the Founders’ language were familiar to me but some apparently belonged to a different database and resisted decoding.

Still, if Liori had worked it out, I could do so too.

I focused on the symbols. They looked familiar. I’d definitely seen them somewhere before, but where?

On the Founders’ ship? – Nope. Their cockpit had been rebuilt by the Dargians. All the signs there had been easy to understand.

My eye lingered on one of the pictograms which was repeated, with slight variations, on all three rings.

I could almost bet it meant
Network
.

Why wasn’t my semantic processor replying?

I focused on the outer ring. Its twelve segments were marked with a pictogram each. I found another familiar symbol. I was sure this was the so-called textoglyph: the hot key triggering a certain command sequence.

It means 'Test'
, a thought arrived from my subconscious.

How did I know that?

The answer came with a sudden flash of memory. I could see myself back in the Haash’ fighter ship. That’s right! That’s where I’d seen them! When Charon and I had customized the ship, he’d explained to me the meaning of every symbol.

Did that mean that the Haash had built this artifact? Or had they simply used the Founders’ textoglyphs? It really didn’t matter. The main thing was, I’d found the key to this language. Now things started to roll.

Network
. Its symbol on the outer ring was accompanied by the sign for infinity. A global network? I wasn’t really sure.

I visualized the control panel from the Haash ship, copying it from my mind expander.

Fleet Command Network
, that’s what it meant!

The middle ring:
Mothership Network
.

Finally, the third and the smallest ring:
Group Network
.

Of course, I couldn’t be a hundred percent sure. The Haash could have used the Founders’ symbols to suit their own needs. The only way to find out was by trial and error. I had to switch the artifact on.

* * *

I opened my eyes. The cliffs around me shook slightly. The muffled sounds of explosions came from the direction of the defense point.

“Foggs, report!”

“We’re advancing. Mopping up all the compartments on our way. No casualties so far. Zander, I’ve chosen a dozen Mechanics and issued them with gravitechs. There’re several of our downed assault modules lying around. We’re removing their electromagnetic weapons and plasma generators. We’ll install them in the Dargians’ slots.”

“Good idea. What are you going to do about the respawn point?”

“Dunno yet. I wanted to discuss it with you first.”

“Send some more men to remove the shield generators from the ships. We know their resonance frequencies,” I gave him a brief version of my and Jurgen’s idea of blocking Dargian respawn points with force fields.

“Does that mean that the Dargians won’t be able to respawn here?”

“Exactly! Give me two minutes to scan my mark. Ours are the same, aren’t they? Both are bound to the resurrection platform.”

“Do you think you can change the respawn equipment settings?” Foggs sounded doubtful.

“I know I can. The technology scanner will help me. While I remember, please keep in mind that I’ll need a long-range transmitter in order to send a Mayday signal to Eurasia. There must be plenty of those inside the assault modules. We’d better remove one straight away and operate it from your defense line.”

“Will do!”

“That’s it, then. Keep up the good work! I’m going to sort out our respawn mark signal and send you the data. In the meantime, I’m not here.”