When we landed back at the Hanseatic League starport, I told Arina to go back to the guildhall without me. I needed some time to get my bearings and wrap my head around everything that was happening. I was on an alien planet in a foreign solar system, and as far as anyone knew, there was no way back.
Well… there was a way back. We had the technology. It wasn’t even particularly difficult. A few hours on a shuttle and I could be home. The treaty prevented it, spaceships were manufactured with self-destruct devices if they got too close, and the Black Knight stood watch in orbit. Three seemingly impenetrable guardians.
Someone had to have pulled it off. Every wall in human history had been crossed at some point. No fortress was truly insurmountable. Human ingenuity truly knew no bounds, especially when it came to exploring places that the general public deemed inaccessible. The poles, the Marianas Trench, Everest, the Moon—nothing was off limits.
But there was still a lingering question: did I want to go back? Other than my friends, I didn’t have much to look forward to on Earth. But that wasn’t necessarily true, either. Earth was far safer than Archon-6. Here, I really only had two choices. I could continue with my team, gaining levels and training and eventually reaching level forty where death was permanent, or I could flounder and sabotage myself on purpose. Skip trainings, get myself killed in missions, stop going to the gym. It would be so easy to just drift in the background. Eventually, the League would kick me out. Then I would be as good as dead.
If I wanted to survive, I had to play the game. Being the best Medic possible and helping my team would be the most surefire way to stay alive. Once I got to level forty… well, I would cross that bridge when I came to it.
For now, I just wanted to enjoy what remained of my day off. I still didn’t have a watch, so my only real timekeeping was hunger, and that was far from accurate. The sun overhead, a small, white blotch on the sky, didn’t exactly move the same as the one I was used to, so I couldn’t count on that either.
In front of the starport, I decided to grab one of the goons and do a little exploring before dark. “Hey, uh, Agent Smith.” The guard fixed me with its robot stare. “Yeah, you. I need a bodyguard. I’m hitting the town. That cost credits or anything?”
The goon shook its head and took up position about two steps behind me. Perfect. A free bodyguard felt like a fairly significant perk. I was starting to believe everyone when they said the Hanseatic League was the best of the best. Judging by some of the other guildhalls we saw on the street, the League was basically Goldman Sachs while everyone else was a dying mom and pop grocery store. They weren’t even comparable.
The soccer pitch I walked by earlier was still empty, and it didn’t have any stadium lights, so I figured my chances of watching a game were slim. Right next to the pitch was a restaurant that caught my eye. It was called Crystal Palace, clearly a soccer-themed establishment, and the exterior was bedecked in red and blue. I wasn’t much of a soccer fan myself, though my parents had pretended to be into European football so much before moving to France that I recognized most of the major teams.
Inside, there were only a couple patrons. Two dour looking men sat at the bar, and a woman who looked to be in her fifties was seated at a corner table. It was obvious from only glance that none of them were in the League or even in any decent guild at all. In fact, everyone appeared either homeless or one missed paycheck from it. I’d been there myself. It was a shitty predicament.
My robotic goon stayed outside, and I took up a seat on the bar away from the others. After a while, the people stopped staring at me and went back to their own drinks and conversations.
“You lost?” a gruff man I took for the proprietor asked. He was wearing a Crystal Palace jersey, though it was clearly handmade.
“Aren’t we all?” I responded. “And how much for a pint?”
The man snorted. “Six credits for the pilsner, eight for the lager. Still working on a recipe for a stout, so that’s all I have.”
“The lager will be perfect.” I placed my membership card on the rough bar, though I didn’t actually know if it worked outside the guildhall.
Fortunately, the man took the card and pressed his thumb to it, then tossed it back with very little decorum. “Fuckin’ Leagers drinkin’ with the fuckin’ peasants…” he muttered under his breath.
Either he knew I was in the League from the goon outside or my membership. Either way, it was good to know that I was both recognizable and resented. It was also good to know that at least beer outside the guildhall was incredibly cheap.
My lager arrived in a cloudy glass, and I took a hesitant sip. Much to my surprise, it wasn’t half bad. It certainly wasn’t anything I would willingly pay for back on Earth, but if it was the free beer at a college party, I wouldn’t turn it down. More Crystal Palace paraphernalia decorated the walls, and I took in the Earth-inspired decor as I sipped my beer.
I still didn’t really have a plan for what I was doing in the bar. I didn’t particularly need a plan, when I thought about it. Maybe I could get a little more information on Earth. The idea of people making it back through all the blockade measures still played at the back of my mind. I slid my card back to the edge of the bar and signaled the old man.
“Any liquor back there?” I asked. I had been in enough backwoods Michigan bars to know that every local place had some crazy cook holed up in the mountains distilling moonshine for them.
Again, the man snorted, but he took my card. He swiped twenty credits off my total—which felt like I was being robbed—and then produced a clear jug from under the bar alongside a shot glass. He poured, and the liquor’s distinct propane aroma virtually slapped me across the face.
The man sauntered off to the other end of the bar without any explanation.
I brought the poison to my nose, and whatever stuffiness was lurking in my sinuses instantly melted away. My eyes watered, and I had to look away. Finally, I got up the nerve to drink the alien moonshine and tossed it back all at once. Better to rip off the bandaid than let it linger.
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The moonshine tasted like fire. Nothing else. Not fire with a hint of alcohol or wood flavor from a barrel. Not even a metallic tang from the copper still. Just pure, unadulterated fire. It was terrible. Instantly, I felt my balance shift a few degrees like I was tilting, though I hadn’t left my stool.
I quickly followed the shot with half my beer. The burn lingered, painfully inching down my esophagus at a snail’s pace.
My poor display of drinking prowess caught the attention of the older woman in the back of the bar. She sat next to me and tapped on the bar with her knuckles. “Another beer, and the Leager’s buying.”
“I’m buying?” I questioned, though I honestly didn’t care. Ten thousand credits was more purchasing power than I had ever enjoyed in my life. A few more beers wouldn’t hurt. The barkeep brought us two pints of the pilsner and then swiped my card again.
“What’s the occasion?” I asked. Over the woman’s shoulder, I saw my bodyguard still positioned at the front door, though his back was turned to the action.
The woman chuckled and downed half her pint in a single swig. “People like you don’t come to places like this without something on your mind. Maybe I can help. What’re ya lookin’ for? Weed? Crystal? PCP? Something a little more… exotic?”
The thought of hardcore drugs existing on Anchor-6 was ridiculous. But as Crunch said, everyone had their priorities.
“I’m fine with a few beers, though I appreciate the offer.”
The woman reeled back on her barstool, making a show of it. “Ah, looking for the things you can’t find in that skyscraper… Come back without the stiff, and I might know a guy who knows a guy.” She winked and flashed a nearly-toothless grin. “Thanks for the pint, lass.”
I couldn’t even begin to imagine what it was the woman was hinting at. Prostitution was clearly legal, so it wasn’t that. Guns? Illegal guns with the serial numbers burned off? It didn’t seem likely. There were a million possibilities, and I had no idea where to even start.
Pondering the woman’s words, I finished my very mediocre pilsner with a grimace and headed back into the street.
None of the other nearby buildings held much immediate interest, so I made my way back to the League and up to my room. Somewhere along the way, I finalized something of a plan in my brain: progressing as best I could with my team was my strongest plan for survival. If caught wind of someone running the Earth blockade, I’d investigate. That door wasn’t entirely closed. Not yet. But I wouldn’t go looking for it, either. Getting caught searching for a way back felt like too much of a risk, and I didn’t need the distraction. Right now, I needed to ensure that I was the best Medic I could possibly be by the time I hit level forty.
Along my path to level forty, I also wanted to figure out what the hell was going on with my alarm clock. Was it really Chase trying to send me some kind of message? There had to be a way to figure it out.
Carrie was the only Netrunner I knew, so I used my membership card to find her apartment and knocked on the door. Luckily, she was home.
“Hey, you mind if I come in?”
She opened the door and ushered me inside. “What’s up?”
I thought about telling her that I went back to see Earth, but I didn’t feel like reliving all those emotions again so decided against it. “You’ve been here a bit longer than me, so I figured I would ask you a few questions if you’re not too busy.”
Carried grabbed a bottle of water from her desk and handed it to me before taking one herself and sitting on the edge of her bed. “I’m not sure how much I can help, but one of the more useful things I just recently learned was that you can take food and drinks out of the cafeteria. I don’t know why, but it never dawned on me before. So I’ve been stocking up on water and snacks lately.”
“Ha, that’s actually a pretty good idea. But I’m curious about the class system a little.” I took a sip of the warm water and spun her desk chair around. Other than a few minor details, our apartments were identical. “I was a nurse back on Earth, so if you fell right now and cut open your hand, I could probably patch you up alright even if I picked a different class.”
“Right. As far as I know, everything you knew back home is the same. I played drums, and I’m sure I could still do it here too.”
“You picked the Netrunner class, so you can hack computer systems in the missions. Could you do it before?”
“A little, but I wasn’t great at it. You trying to hack your Hiveboard or something?”
She seemed skeptical, and I couldn’t blame her. Figuring honesty was the best policy—and I really had nothing to hide in the first place—I told her everything. I spared no detail. From the first time my TV flickered in my apartment back home to the alarm clock going haywire and displaying Chase’s area code.
After a bit of thinking, Carrie shook her head. “I don’t know how any of the devices here really work,” she said. “It’s not like I’ve taken apart a clock or disassembled one of the tablets to check out the internal components.”
“Think you could?”
She shrugged. “Let’s try it. But if I completely ruin my clock, you’re buying me another. One of the shops has to sell these things.”
She grabbed her alarm clock from the nightstand and turned it over in her hands. “Well, that could be a problem.”
“What is it?”
“There aren’t any seams, nothing to pry open so we can see the innards.” She tossed the wireless clock to me, and I ran my fingers over every inch. There was nothing.
“We could smash it,” I offered. “You know where we could get a hammer?”
“There are plenty of weights in the gym. If we drop a couple forty-five pound plates on it, I doubt it would survive.”
I liked that idea. “Come on. Let’s give it a shot. Then I’ll buy you a new alarm clock.”
It only took two plates to completely shattered the clock. Once it broke, the insides resembled a fairly typical device from Earth: a circuit board, some wires, sloppy soldering. The only thing different was the lack of power source. As far as either of us could tell, there was no battery, and without any plugs or external wires, it wasn’t drawing power from a wall outlet. Actually, I hadn’t seen any wall outlets since arriving on Archon-6.
“Can you use any of your Netrunner abilities outside of a mission?” I asked. If she could, the possibilities would be profound. Sadly, she shook her head.
“Nope. I’ve tried. But… I think I can bring the guts into our next training mission tomorrow. Zhenya will probably have my ass for it, but it might be worth a try. What do you say?”
I liked the idea. “Let’s do it. It’s too late now to get another alarm clock, so I’ll wake you up in the morning. Bring as much of the insides with you tomorrow as you can. Though… I already tried to take something out of a mission, and the system wouldn’t let me. So even if you do get it inside, it might not come back out.”
“Everyone tries to steal shit from the missions,” Carried said with a laugh. “In my very first training mission before I was placed on a team, I found a diamond ring on a corpse, some kind of super expensive engagement ring. It just looked pretty, so I nabbed it. Vanished right off my finger when the mission ended.”
“Well at least we have a plan. And even if you can’t bring it back, if you can figure out how the thing actually works, it could be useful. I’m telling you—Chase is trying to send me a message from Earth. I know it.”