CHAPTER 11

Taking a moment to examine the 5 doorways that were spaced evenly around the room I observed that the outline was of each was glowing with a faint white hue.  Examining them closer it became apparent the color and the slight humming noise was coming from what looked like miniature lightning bolts constantly flashing all around the circumference of the door.  I held my hand up to the doorway but could not feel any difference.  My musings were interrupted but Winston moaning in his sleep and then suddenly whispering Khloe.  Damn it, there would be no more reruns of old reality shows for my little dragon.  He clearly was fixated on the Kardashians, probably from watching multiple episodes of the old reality series.  Looking to the past to satisfy the desires of the future.  Not sure that ever works. The best-case scenario was to learn from the past not live in it.  Not sure where I had heard that quote but it had stuck with me for many years.

Turning my attention back to the doorways I observed that they were all the same, the only difference was the background color of the doorway itself, they ranged from gray to green, in no apparent order.  Without having any knowledge of what doorway led where I choose at random and simply stepped through the gray one.  As I passed through I felt a wave of energy enter me and then shatter throughout my body, then suddenly I was through.  

Text appeared as soon as I made it through the opening and I read, Welcome player you are the first to find and explore this area of the game and will be rewarded XP, search for useful items, but beware, this is a war zone.  As soon as I read the text it disappeared and I was back to falling but fortunately, the ground was there to catch me.  Landing on my feet, thanks to the cyborg reflexes and built in combat computer.  I glanced around, the CC or combat computer scanning my surroundings looking for danger or anything out of the ordinary.

There were no life forms or mechs nearby, in fact, I seemed to be in some kind of an enclosed arboretum.  The trees were tall and leafy, I did not recognize them but I could tell by the colors that they were nothing I had ever seen before.  I slowly made my way through the trees until I came to the curved wall.  Looking up at the curvature of the wall I could see through the clear material that I was in space, on a huge space station.  I was in a dome, one of hundreds that were joined by tubular corridors, many of these domes held plants, and nearby were three larger domes that held water.  Their size was immense, a whale could swim in one of them.  The other domes extended in a connected maze for kilometers.  It was like a trapezoidal icositetrahedron, an immense structure that held different biospheres, the whole thing reminded me of a Hoberman Sphere, an isokinetic structure that could contract and expand.  

It was amazing and beautiful and terrifying, but most of all it was alien.  This was not something that man had built, the question was who had built it?  It was evident that all was not well with the structure, many of the domes showed signs of damage, and several had suffered violent decompression.  There were domes that were half melted and along with passageways that were broken in half.  Somewhere in this maze was a power plant and a life support module.  There was the possibility that crew members would still be on board somewhere.  Or whatever had fought them.  I glanced around but could see no ghostly openings, or entranceways, my only hope of getting off this space station was to find the command module and try to familiarize myself with alien tech.  

Winston who had just woken up purred at me, “Hungry.”  Then he flew into the air and in a shimmer just disappeared.  I wish I knew how the hell he did that.  The dragon was not an infant but more a teenager I decided, all he wants to do is eat, sleep and fantasize about the Kardashians.  I was on my own again, and I had a lot of ground to cover.  I began to walk around the circumference of the dome I was in, I was looking for several things, the door, a maintenance locker, and a terminal.  Nothing as advanced as this station could function without a central CPU monitoring all the domes and maintaining homeostasis.  Walking the circumference of the dome I arrived at the exit.  It was a simple airlock that led into the connecting passageway to the next dome.  Beside it was a large storage locker, opening it revealed gardening tools.  They looked much like a rake or shovel would look like, form follows function is a universal truth.  

The computer terminal that lit up when I opened the doorway was of interest, the keyboard was larger than normal and while it held keys that might be letters it also held larger keys that looked like hànzì, simplified Chinese writing.  I could not make heads or tails of it, I had no linguistic abilities.  I videoed everything and then left the shed.  Going to the airlock door, I pushed the large button and was rewarded with the doorway opening.  The air had a musty smell to it but was breathable, I did not really breath anymore but try convincing the mind that it did not need to breathe after a lifetime of sucking in air.  Sure as hell did not work for me.  Entering the passage, I walked the 20 meters to the next biosphere and pushed the button to open the airlock.  Entering I could immediately detect the pleasant smell of flowers, they whole area was blanketed with little hillocks that held thousands of plants many of which were flowering.  It was surreal, looking past the flowers and seeing the huge space stations, several of the other domes glinting with light while others were darkened, broken, and battered.

I transferred through several domes while trying to make my way deeper into the center until I finally came to a dome that was damaged.  It held air, but there were signs that a violent struggle had taken place here.  This dome had not held plants but rather small areas that joined others with several larger areas along the outer walls.  It reminded me of a hive and looked like it had been one of the crew's living areas.  The walls showed evidence of energy weapon deployment and the bodies scattered across the dome were a testament to the fighting that had taken place here.  I began to search the area around the circumference, stopping at the first set of bodies that I saw.  They were Martians, no doubt about that, they were positioned in fighting formations with benches and tables piled up in front of them.

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The blasters that their enemies had used had cut right through the barricade and brought an end to the resistance.  I bent down and picked up a hand weapon it was of unfamiliar design.  Looking like a flintlock it had a ghostly rune on the grip and when my hand touched the rune the weapon powered up.  Above my thumb, three small lights glowed red then yellow than green, once all three were green a larger orange light came on.  The trigger was much like a trigger on a gun with a finger guard protecting it.    Why not, I thought and turned to aim the gun towards the middle of the dome I pulled the trigger as I sighted in at the nearby inner wall.  With no noise, three emerald beams shot out of the barrel one after the other faster than a human eye could see.  They hit the wall and punched on through it going through three other walls before stopping.

I stared at the weapon and then tried firing it 2 more times in rapid succession, again both shots produced similar results, and I noted that the lights did not change on the back of the gun.  I slipped the gun into my waistband and continued to walk along the outer rim, stopping to check on all the other weapons I came across.  None worked but I resolved to check each one.  If I could find a couple more to take back and have Noa reverse engineer then, well that could be a game breaker.  Seeing nothing of interest I began to cut through the center of the hive.  It was slow going but I hoped to locate other useful items.  Nothing turned up and eventually I gave up and continued to the next biosphere.  The hours passed with me exploring about four of the ecosystems.   Only the one had held crew the rest held plants.

I decided to spend the night sleeping beside a large tree that was next to a small stream the meandered across the ecosystem.  I did not really need to sleep but the old brain patterns still insisted I close my eyes and rest.  Settling in I looked out at the stars, the station a massive structure that surrounded me enclosed by the cold of space drifting who knows where.  Shit, I did not even know if I was still in the solar system.  It was beautiful and somehow sad; many people had dedicated tremendous resources to this station and now it was abandoned and damaged.  I wanted to know more, did the Martians build it and if so why, what was the purpose.  Eventually, my eyes closed and I drifted off to the tinkle of water splashing on the rocks.

I opened my eyes and stretched, old habits die hard.  Sitting up I looked around, still the same peaceful habitat.  The next three biospheres would not be so peaceful, they were damaged and showed evidence of fighting.  Washing my face in the stream I thought of what I might find, I was hoping for more weapons but any kind of tech would be worthwhile.  Finishing off I made my way to the airlock and entered the passageway.  The airlock at the far end was damaged, and would not release fully.  Grabbing the edge, I began to exert my strength and managed to slide the airlock to the side far enough to enter.  I hoped that the biosphere would continue to hold air as the airlock was now wedged and I doubted that I could close it.

Stepping through I once again observed the effects of a battle.  This one was more severe, with melted puddles of floor material and walls that were reduced to mere rubble.  I began to walk along the outer edge when suddenly my CC took over and I dived behind a pile of rubble, the hum of an energy weapon firing loud in my ear.  My Hud suddenly displayed my body, I had taken a hit in the left shoulder and lost about 55 percent mobility in that arm.  Glancing down I could see through the cauterized skin to the alloyed structure of my skeleton.  The damage was pretty severe, with melted holes and shorted wires along with damaged stepper motors.  The CC was still actively tracking the firing of the energy weapon as my body slid further down the pile of rubble and entered a small opening in one of the many building that filled the dome.

My HUD was also cycling through what looked like different wiring diagrams of my upper torso until it stopped on one that turned a green color.  I quickly read on the HUD Alternative circuit path found rerouting wiring, estimated 76 percent use of the arm.  Well, that was better than a kick in the teeth, but what the hell had shot and damaged me.  I was a fool, I should have been paying attention, I had been warned that this was a war zone.  In fact, it occurred to me I had been playing the game like an idiot all along, doing things that put me in danger and not taking proper precautions.  I could hear the sound of the rubble out front slowly being reduced by the blaster fire so I pushed my self-recriminations to the back of my mind.  I needed to be in the now and to identify, target and eliminate the threat.

I scanned my environment and noted that stairs leading upwards.  I climbed up and proceeded to the top of the tower, it was 4 stories high and was the highest structure still standing in the area.  The rooftop had a 2-meter-tall wall around it.  Crouching down I walked to where the sound was loudest.  I did not want to look over the wall if they spotted me I would be trapped.  Looking around I noted that due to the damage the domes clear panels were now clouded with some being opaque and others having taken energy bolts had the look of polished metal, a speculum of panels fused together.  They were a mirror and by positioning myself I could see what I was dealing with.

In the overhang of a building that had almost collapsed in on itself was what looked like a cigar tube on tracks with two forward mounted fully articulated weapons, one of which was repeatedly firing into the debris at the front of my building.  At the back of the tube standing up were several narrow pieces of metal, the antennae of sensors I would guess.  One of the tracks was damaged, and that was what had kept me alive.  The weapon could not move and could only maintain a constant barrage directed at where it had last seen me.  I had several options, I could use my modern weapons to attempt to disable it. I could attempt to use my ancient Martian runic weapon which I had decided to name the Merrifield but did not know if it had the oomph to deliver the kill.

I could also scout a way past the weapon and continue on my journey but that idea did not agree with me.  I had to take the weapon out, and then attempt to see if some of the tech could be salvageable.  Being here was too big an opportunity to waste, the more alien tech I could find and document the greater my chances of doing well in the game were.  I focused on the mirrored panels, with CC provided all the input I needed I pulled both of my weapons out.  The Merrifield and the Winchester-Crossman which I loaded with high impact BBs, set to fire in bursts of twenty.  Taking a deep breath in I stood up and with the target locked in my CC, I began to fire.