No one greeted them as they got out of their ships. Cam wasn’t sure if that was a good sign or a bad one. There was atmosphere in the bay--somehow held in--despite the door opened to outer space. The wing formed up and got their combat armor and weapons equipped. The meeting was supposed to be easy and uneventful, but always better safe than sorry. Will’s contact was in charge of the station, but there were at least a few other players who used the station frequently based upon Caelestis’ last known intel.
Cam didn’t have much, a blaster, half a dozen small drones in his inventory, and a light armor jacket that went over his normal flight suit. The armor included a helmet which had the ability to slide back or fully hide when not in combat. His looked like a standard star trooper type helmet: a round dome with an extra plate worked in around the back and sides, and with a small clear visor coming down to his nose. Cam appreciated the hide option. Even in a game like Celestial Void, which seemed built around players fighting each other for territory, it was a good nod toward human interaction. Masked soldiers in battle were one thing, but being forced to choose between protection and a visible face (not to mention how tacky full-frontal clear visors looked) was a bad thing for an MMO based on humans forming relationships with other humans.
Most of the other pilots wore medium armor of varying types, anything from thick protection for projectile and energy weapons to partial mechanical suits which augmented their abilities. None wore full suits like the boarding and defensive soldiers Cam had seen on the Engra, but still there were some that might be considered heavy armor. He just couldn’t tell at a glance yet. Cam had stuck with light armor, not because he couldn’t use heavier gear, but because anything heavier would slow him down. The rest of the wing all had enough speed and strength or dexterity to not be encumbered with the extra protection.
To his surprise, Tophet formed up into the front lines. He would never have guessed she would be even a semi-heavy melee hitter, but that was the part of the formation she took. Her dark red suit verged on black, heavily protecting her from all sides, and her assault rifle rested in a two point sling in front of her chest, ready to be used at a moment’s notice. A sword type weapon hung in a sheath from her side and she wore a combat vest full of gear. Her shift from pilot to soldier seemed to be completely normal to her.
Several others joined her in the front, including Lant, and the rest of the more heavily armored pilots stood in the back as a rear guard. Lant gave Cam a grin as they formed up. He was clearly enjoying having a heavy rifle to swing around. The squad formed around Will, looking like a sort of honor guard for him.
Will looked undergeared in comparison to the pilots around him. He wore simple black medium armor that seemed too weak to protect him, but Cam knew it had to be stronger than it looked. Will had his pistol in a holster on his side, but knowing Will, he certainly had his attachments for them somewhere on his person. The privileges of being an officer, he had said.
Malk Zelou and Kass Mector stood near Will, in the middle of the pilots. Cam also stood in the protected center, just behind the other three. He would be a liability in pretty much any battle both due to his low level and lack of training on Caelestis guild combat tactics.
Cam also saw Steve in the formation, in the back. They didn’t make eye contact, but Cam felt uneasy with the man behind him. Steve would have to be a fool to try to kill him or anyone in the group now--and besides, Cam couldn’t say that the man wasn’t loyal, even if he disliked Cam.
But no one wanted to die out here. Not yet, at least.They needed a spawn point first. And that was their goal here--to set up a local spawn point so that dying would not be as bad as it was now. Each death still ate into their numbers, but once spawn point was set up, they would have a fall back base.
It would still have its weaknesses. The spawn point itself could be tracked if too many of them died too fast, and blowing up the spawn point would put them back to where they were now. But it was another layer of protection. They were going to be out here for at least a tri-week or two. Dying in games was normal. Most games had some penalty for it, but it was expected that players would do it at least from time to time. Currently the penalty for the wing was too much--to be sent back to home territory and have a low chance of completing the mission. They needed to be not afraid of dying if they were to get everything done for the mission.
Standing in the hangar made Cam feel exposed. It was so much larger than the Engra’s, which had been designed only for fighters. This bay was wide open. It looked like a giant elliptical cylinder on its side, and they were about a third of the way up one side. The ships around him were powered down, but even a single one of them could kill them all in one barrage while they were exposed out of their ships.
They exited the platform into what looked like an observation room. It had on its side nearest the hangar a full window, which could see almost the entire bay. The room was worn down and dirty. The window had large smugges in several places. Trash lay in one corner.
Will was trying to use the comms to get ahold of his contact when a set of doors opened into the room. The doors ground as they opened, the sound of neglect running its course. One man stood in the doors as they opened. No one raised a weapon to the single, unarmed man, but two pilots took a step inwards to close the formation and protect Will. Everyone else stood ready for action, many taking that disinterested-looking pose that was both meant to disarm any potential adversaries but still allowed them to be ready to go at a moment’s notice.
The man who stepped through the doorway wore a dusty brown work jacket. His face was grime-covered,except around his eyes. A pair of goggles were pushed up into his hair, the obvious cause of his cleaner eyes. He looked like he had just finished fixing an old, dirty motor.
“William!” he said, wiping his hands with a rag. It only marginally cleaned his hands, as the rag itself was grime-crusted. “It’s nice to see you.”
“Mark,” said Will, with a nod and a smile. “Is everything ready?”
“So much in a hurry,” Mark said, tsking and shaking his head. “What about a ‘hello’ or ‘how are you?’”
The door closed behind the man. Cam took a deep breath to keep from feeling claustrophobic in the room. He tried to put the giant hangar behind him out of his mind, and ignore the fact that even a fighter could blast through the window with a single concentrated salvo.
“Fine,” said Will, rolling his eyes. “Hello. Is everything ready?”
“You’re no fun, you know that?” said Mark, still trying to clean his hands with the cloth. “Everything is almost ready. I couldn’t start too soon because your adventure stirred up a lot of scrutiny by my illustrious Aluvius overseers. The clone bay is the last thing to pack up. It should be ready in just a few more minutes.”
“And how secure is the station right now?” Will asked, folding his arms.
“Unfortunately for you, business is booming,” he said grinning. “That means a lot more people are coming around. Things are starting to look up here. But I did try to get one or two miners to organize a mining operation. I pushed for as many pilots to go on it as possible. So it’s mostly secure, I guess.”--he waved his hand in the more-or-less signal--“That’s about as good as I can get. We have over fifty players who use this as their base of operations. I can’t control them all.”
“A victim of your own success.”
“I suppose. This area isn’t super lucrative compared to some systems Aluvius has heavy infrastructure in, but if you want to be left alone to mine and fabricate out of the Aluvius guild proper, then this is the place to be. I’ve been expanding the station to accommodate that. Huge investment, but it should pay off. Come on, let’s get you to a place a bit better for hiding. I’ll move your fighters to storage for now, just in case someone decides to drop by while we’re still getting everything prepared. They can still be ready in a moment’s notice, so don’t worry.”
Mark turned and led the way, back through the door he had entered. Parts of the station were definitely in better condition than others. Where they had landed seemed to be in the worst condition. Cam wondered if that was on purpose. Most players would skip the crusty old landing pad and go for something more shiny. It made it a better place than most to welcome visitors who didn’t want to be generally known. In just a minute or so they had made a few twists and turns and walked far enough that Cam felt disoriented. Fortunately his HUD kept track of their path and updated his view of the station as they walked. He might not know the ins and outs of the station, but he would be able to follow the path back to the hangar in an emergency.
There wasn’t much talking during the walk. Mark was several meters in front of the squad, to check in case anyone was ahead of them who they might not want to see them. Two of the heavies were next. If someone needed to be taken out, Will didn’t want their full numbers seen. Large numbers always drew more attention than smaller numbers.
They stopped in a medium-sized supply room. Mark assured them that no one would go in there, and that he showed them how to lock the doors. It was one of his several private storage areas. It was the cleanest space Cam had seen so far on the station, and large enough to hold all of them comfortably. Chairs and tables were set up, with all the actual storage containers stacked into neat piles. Even the metallic smell felt clean. Some whiffs of old oil came through the vents, but overall the smell was more pleasant than anywhere else in the station so far.
A few pilots stood guard at the door, but most pilots sat down and relaxed, even if they still had their gun within reach. The door had large storage pallets behind it, blocking the view of anyone entering from the main storage area. Mark showed them his back door escape route from the room and gave them a schematic of the area, in case they needed to use it. For as much as he assured the wing that they were safe and no one would find them, he still was paranoid. Not that Cam minded. He was all for living long enough to get his spawn point out here.
Mohler left with Mark to help make sure everything was as they needed. Will had wanted to go, but the other squad leaders agreed that he shouldn’t take unnecessary risks with himself. Not at this point. It left the other pilots with time to burn and nothing much to do with it.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for this boredom to end,” said Lant--Pete, Cam reminded himself--plopping down in a seat next to Cam. He still had his rifle in his hand, but he tilted his head back and looked up at the ceiling. Only a few minutes had passed with them sitting her, and already Pete looked ready to shoot the walls to give himself something to do.
“Boredom?” Cam asked. “We’ve haven’t been here for five minutes.”
He had pulled one of his drones out and was playing with it. It was the same size as the one he used on the Engra during the fight, small enough to fit in his hand with his fingers outstretched, but this one was more powerful. Right now he was trying to move it about the room while still keeping the camera on himself. How well could he judge the room, based on looking at one viewpoint. It was an odd feeling. He was looking at the drone, but also seeing his own face at the same time. Something about I-Flight seemed to make the transition to multiple perspectives easier. Probably that I-Flight already was vastly different than normal perception as he could see the entire battlefield around him at once.
“All this sneaking around isn’t for me,” said Pete. “I prefer a solid fight to all the cloak and dagger stuff.”
“We’ll be more free once we get the clone bay,” said Cam, “but we’ll still have to be pretty sneaky. Can’t trace them to us back here. I just hope we won’t be holed up in this room the entire time.”
“Here?” said Pete. “No, not here. The clone bay we’re getting we’re going to move. We’re going to find a place in the middle of nowhere to set up shop and go from there.”
“Oh, I thought Mark had to set up something with their clone bay here to get it so we can use it.”
“Naw, nothing like that,” Pete said, shaking his head. “We couldn’t use his. This Mark guy may have built this station, but if it’s Aluvius sponsored then they’ll have access and partial control over it. He can hide some stuff from them, but not clonebay use. They’ll get a notification for anyone who is added to the registry. If twenty of us set it up as our spawn point--even over a few days--Aluvius will look into it. At that point it’ll be game over.”
Cam thought about that for a moment. It made sense, but it also meant more steps before they had a secure spawn point. He let out a sign. “I hate all this cloak and dagger stuff, too. I mean it’s fun to a point, but we’re still at so much risk for our mission--and I don’t even know what it is yet. I’m with you. Let’s go blow something up.”
The big man grinned, and slapped Cam on the back. “I knew there was a reason I liked you. We’ll find a good fight for us once we get our spawn out here and a few ships made in reserve.”
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He and Pete sat and chatted for a few more minutes. Pete told him all he knew about the clone bay. The smallest version of the device--the one they were most likely going to get--was able to accommodate just fifty people using it as their spawn point. The wait they had was for Mark to pack it up. Such a powerful piece of equipment was tough to move and deploy. Once the Wing found a spot to set it up, it would take a few days for them to prepare it to be moved again.
Cam kept practicing with his drones. Once he felt used to the two perspectives of having one drone out, he pulled out a second. It felt twice as difficult to have three perspectives instead of two. He flew the two back and forth, sometimes together, sometimes going in opposite directions. It took time to even get basic motions down when both drones weren’t doing the exact same thing.
A few pilots seemed to be interested in what he was doing. He ignored them to focus on the drones. Soon he could give some basic orders to both while having them do different motions, but having them move together was by far the easiest. Fortunately he avoided smashing them against anything hard in the tight spaces, but he did induce a few laughs on some near misses and some of his attempts at formations in the tight space.
“You gotta teach me some of that,” said Tophet, taking another seat near him. Emma, Cam had again to remind himself. They were off the battlefield, and the wing was supposedly less formal outside of combat situations unless the moment needed it. Cam had been so focused on his drones he had missed her walking over.
“What, teach you how to use two underpowered drones at the same time?” Pete said, incredulously. “He might be getting the hang of it, but it won’t be muchhelp.”
Cam grunted in agreement. “I can’t even chew gum and do this at the same time, let alone walk.”
He was still intrigued by the possibilities of using drones, but he was starting to see why people had problems with them. He could barely move them slowly around the storage room while having this conversation. One drone was looking at himself while flying, and the other was pointed at the main door. Seeing those while still looking through his own eyes at them was enough to make him light headed. He couldn’t imagine trying to move around at the same time. Not yet at least.
“Most people give up after even attempting to use two drones,” Emma said. “It’s too much for them. Two is nice. How many can you control at once right now?”
“Theoretically? Six, but three of these will start to drain my Psi Energy faster than it can recharge. Will gave these to me. They’re fairly nice for being the smallest class of drone. They reserve and drain more Psi Energy than the drones I was using with my ship though. I could do six only for a few seconds before I was at zero Psi Energy. Three I could do for about a half an hour.”
“Not bad for a low level,” Pete said. “Well, if you can keep this up we’ll have to get you a drone boat of a fighter at some point. See what you can do on the field with a few more drones. I’ll admit yours weren’t doing too bad in the fights.”
“I-Flight does seem to help,” Cam said, voicing his thoughts from earlier. He moved his drones towards the main door and caught the attention of the guards there. After a moment they got the hint, but didn’t open the door. Eventually they peaked around the storage pallets and looked over at him. Emma waved them on and they opened the doors for Cam’s drones to fly out. There were no guards outside--it could draw attention--so he maneuvered his drones down far enough each way that he could spot anyone coming near. He hid them up at the ceiling of the hallway, each tucked between some conduit for extra camouflage. “Without I-Flight I feel clunky just trying to control them at all,” he finished, pulling out a third.
He activated that as well and moved it slowly. Four viewpoints now, but three of them weren’t moving. He could do it, but barely. Still, even three drones of this quality would barely put a dent in a heavy soldier. He’d need either heavier drones or more if he wanted to do a decent amount of damage in a fire fight.
“Give it time,” said Emma encouragingly. “You might be onto something with this--for yourself at least. You’re doing great for barely being a tri-day old in-game.”
He kept practicing to pass the time. Emma and Pete talked a bit, but he couldn’t follow the conversation. Every time he tried, he lost control of one or more of his drones. The two he had in the outside hallway kept watch while he moved the third one about in the storage area. He also tried to get up and walk around while still controlling them. That got a bit tricky, but he eventually he could do some basic movements with the one drone while walking in a straight line and not feeling dizzy. The two extra perspectives of the drones outside was enough to throw off his concentration. Eventually Cam figured he could maybe use two drones while in combat, but three was still too much to control effectively for now.
Eventually Mohler and Mark returned. Cam had a heads up from his drones outside and said something as soon as he saw them. The wing was antsy and ready to move. Most had been fidgeting with either a weapon or something they found in the room. They all stopped when Cam spoke up. The guards opened the doors and peaked out, impatiently waving the two in. As they talked to Will, all ears seemed to be pointed at the three. The conversation was quiet, but in a few moments Will nodded, and turned to address everyone.
“Time to head back out,” he said. Even those words seemed to ease much of the tension in the room. No one liked to “hurry up and wait” as so often was needed in these moments. “The clone bay is in the loading area for the hangar. Gauss will be flying the cargo ship Mark has for us. We need to get her fighter packed up and put in the ship as well before we go. I don’t need to remind you to move quickly and be careful not to be seen.”
In less than thirty seconds everyone gathered what little they had dared set down before and were ready to move. Before they could form up, however, Cam spotted something through his drones.
“Two people are walking towards the door,” Cam said to Will. He hadn’t seen any other people in the hallways besides when Mohler and Mark came back.
Will motioned for quiet. Those who were close enough to have heard what Cam had said looked at him. They knew he had two of his drones outside, and were waiting. No one wanted an incident now that everything else was in place.
“Are they stopping or moving on?” Will asked, barely loud enough to be heard.
“They’re still walking up,” Cam said quietly, as he watched. “They’re at the door now. They’re talking about something... I can’t quite hear. Logistics of moving gathered material from here to another place? Now they’re looking around. They’re at the control panel. I can’t see what they’re doing to it.”
“Thieves,” Mark hissed, pulling out his blaster. “Everyone knows this is my storage and off limits. No one should be touching that panel. They’re trying to steal from my stash.”
“How long will it take them?” Will asked.
“Not sure. Depends.” Mark shrugged, gun still at the ready. “If they’re good hackers, maybe two minutes. Less if they get lucky. More if they’re idiots. I have some defenses in here but they’re turned off. They’d fire at you too unless I put you all in my system, which would definitely leave clues for Aluvius.”
“Everyone through the back door, then,” Will said loud enough to be heard. “Mics on, channels up. Mark, you can turn on the defenses once we’re out.”
Right then they heard a clang and the front doors opened a crack. Already pilots were funneling through the back exit, but the secret passage turned out to be a crawl space rather than a walkway. Depending on how lucky the thieves were with their hacking the wing might not have enough time for them all to get out.
“Lant, Tophet, Jages, Jawntwo,” Will listed out. “Set up by the door. Someone kill the lights. Are the thieves well armed?”
“No,” said Cam. “No armor, just some handguns.”
Will nodded. “Mark, you want to confront them or just kill them?”
“Kill them. If they’re knocking up this place they’re up to no good.”
Lant, Tophet, and the two other pilots, took up positions on each side of the large storage containers. Everyone else was still hidden from the view of the doors. Lant and Tophet were in front on their respective sides, their heavier armor providing protection. Jawntwo and Jages were in lighter armor, but still bore some large guns. Jages--who was another female--took up position behind Tophet, and Jawntwo was behind Lant. He saw grins flash between both sides, as if this was going to be a battle of the sexes as to who would get the kills first. The lights inside the storage room turned off a moment after the groups were in position.
Cam watched the thieves as they worked outside. One was busy with the control panel, the other was tinkering with a device in his hand. Cam realized it was a communication device.
“Two more guys are walking up,” Cam said into his mic. He set it to broadcast only to those within a small range. The pilots filing through the crawl space didn’t need to be distracted, especially if they encountered more unforeseen circumstances. “They have loaders of some sort it looks like. It looks like the four of them are working together.”
“A conspiracy,” Mark growled. He looked furious in the semi-dark. Even with the lights off Cam could make out his expression.
“Get these often?” Will asked, almost jokingly. Cam felt too tense to joke at the moment and gave a sideways look at Will that his friend didn’t even see. They were in a game, yes, but their hard work of the last couple days might just get found out by random chance.
“I guess with how the place has been so popular, I haven’t vetted people properly.”
“You’ve probably been enjoying all the revenue they bring,” said Will.
“Can’t deny that. As I said, it’s been booming recently,” said Mark with a grin. “Good news for you guys at least: if they were part of Aluvius they are low level players in it and won’t be trusted anymore once I report this in.”
“I would still like to keep as low a profile as possible,” said Will. “Less anyone knows the better. Four soldiers will still be enough to take them out quickly if we can’t escape fast enough, and in either case we’ll be far away before they can raise a fuss after they respawn.”
About half the wing had left through the tunnel by now. Cam could still see the four men working on the panel. They probably wanted to get in and out as fast as they could. Less potential complications that way.
“They’ll probably respawn here,” said Mark. “That’ll give you even more time before they can report back.”
The doors creaked open farther. Light poured in from the crack, over the top of the storage units that were near the front door. The four pilots were still dark and would be almost impossible to see by someone coming into the room from a well lit hallway.
“None of them are looking down the halls,” Cam said, “so they might have more people involved as scouts.”
“How are you seeing them?” Mark asked. “Can you show them to me? Six is getting a bit big for a heist around here.”
“I’m using my drones as cameras,” Cam responded. “I can’t show you. Maybe there’s a way but I don’t know it yet. One of the guys has a--”
He was cut off as the doors slammed open. Nothing happened for a precious few seconds, but he didn’t dare make any more noise. Cam watched from the outside with his drones. The men slowly peaked in, but with the lights off they weren’t able to see much.
“Someone find the lights,” one man said as he took a step in. The other men followed.
Immediately the four pilots opened fire. Once the men stepped inside they didn’t have any cover. The weapon fire was loud in Cam’s ears. He was less than half a dozen meters from the gunshots. He lost his focus on his drones as his head rang. When he recovered the gun fire had stopped, but only three bodies were on the floor.
“Crat!” said Tophet, already moving forward. Jages was moving with her. Lant and Jawntwo were just a few moments behind.
“Left side!” shouted Cam, seeing the man with his drones. He moved his drones to follow. Unfortunately the man didn’t look wounded, so he was moving fast. Either he had held back far enough to dive for cover or had just got lucky with the bullets hitting his friends and not him. Cam’s closest drone started firing, trying to hit the man anywhere to slow him down. The other drone was still closing distance.
He landed a few shots, all of them only doing ten points of damage. Cam could see that it barely dented the man’s health bar. If the man had as little health as Cam it would take eighteen hits to drop him and it looked like he had far more than that. His shots weren’t even slowing the man down. Bullets from Tophet and Jawntwo started flying down the hallway as well, but the man quickly reached the next corner and dove behind it. Some of the shots had connected and had chunked into his health, but Cam couldn’t see him for a precious few seconds. Cam continued following with his drones, but already he heard Will calling over the comms.
“Pull back!,” he ordered. “Move to the hangar. We’ll worry about any fallout from this later.”
Cam used his lead drone to peak around the corner. He didn’t want to linger, but he didn’t want to find the man was limping and just a couple shots away from dying. As he peaked, however, he felt his drone careen out of control. It dipped and he could barely steady it. At first he thought the man had some device that might interfere with controlling drones, but as far as he knew that didn’t exist in game. The man was running away but Cam couldn’t control his drone enough to order it to open fire. A moment later, when the man reached the next bend, Cam realized he had hit his drone control range limit. For small drones such as these, the range was only thirty meters--a good distance, but if he wasn’t physically following the fight, his drones would reach it in seconds. He ordered his drones back. Will was motioning the last of the pilots to the rear exit. Mark was up by the door when Cam’s drones arrived.
“The good news is that these were thugs who joined just a couple weeks ago,” Mark said, examining the bodies. Bodies remained even after death. They didn’t despawn for hours, and if someone claimed them they wouldn’t despawn at all. The players themselves would soon wake up in new bodies, back at their spawn point, but their old bodies remained for examination. “The bad news is that their spawn points are in station and I can’t access station security to lock down the station’s clone bay. Someone is hacking into the main system. I can ferret them out but it will take time. I’m also not sure how many friends they have if they organized this. If he was right about them having lookouts--” he waved towards Cam “--then there are probably at more than six of them.”
“Nothing we can’t handle,” said Will as he waited for Cam to grab his drones. “If they get organized they might be a nuisance, but it looked like they were going for an easy score.”
“I’m just waiting for the other shoe to fall,” Mark said with a grin. “It always seems to. Get going. I’ll be fine here. It just might take me a bit of time to weed out the bad apples.”
They left Mark to his clean up and went through the back exit. The crawl space only lasted about fifty meters before it opened up to larger side passageways. Lant, Tophet, and the other two pilots had waited for them, saying they didn’t want Will to go without an escort. From there it was just a short jaunt to the hangar and their ships.
In the bay, a huge cargo ship had been moved to the berth next to the landing pad their fighters were on. If Mark had stowed their fighters, they were already back out and ready to fly again. Gauss’s fighter had been put into storage mode, which took up far less space, but meant it would have to be redeployed to be useable again. A giant hangar crane was moving the fighter into the hauler’s cargo bay.
Unfortunately the hangar doors were closed at the moment, Cam saw, so they couldn’t make a quick getaway unless they opened automatically from the inside. They might need to get Mark to open it for them. Hopefully that wouldn’t be an issue.
The crane finished its loading and he saw a woman--Gauss most likely--run from the crane and down the berth to the cargo ship. The cargo ship was massive compared to fighters. It was about the same length as a cruiser, and bulky enough to fit plenty inside it. Most of the other pilots were already in their fighters, ready to launch.
Lant and Jawntwo lead the way down to the fighters. Will and Cam were next, and Tophet and Jages followed behind. Before they reached their fighters, they heard a voice over their squad’s general comm channel.
“Bad news, guys,” came Mark’s voice. “It seems these guys were in league with one of the pirate gangs around here. There’s a small fleet outside the station. If you want to get out, you’re going to have to fight.”
Well, thought Cam wryly, at least the hangar doors were closed at the moment. Otherwise they might have come into the hangar under some heavy fire. This way they’re going to get a chance to fight.