Chapter 37. Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf
I materialized my sidearm and jumped to Jax’s position, “Matty I need you to focus; We're surrounded here!”
I looked down and Jax was alive thought he wasn't in good shape. His right arm was useless, lying limply on the ground. He was spitting blood, and it didn’t look good, but he was alive.
Jax struggled to raise his head and point his left hand at his brother. “Get your head in the fight and go get those SOBs,” he shouted to his brother.
The two Lycoans Jax and Matty had engaged were now regrouping. They smelled blood literally and figuratively, and now they wanted to finish it.
“Hey, why not just give up and let us finish this cleanly, Human?” the Commander shouted.
The Commander and the other two mercenaries were hanging back now. They figured that two trained Lycoan mercenaries could take out two humans, and they would have a little fun watching.
One of the mercenaries looked at the other, "Five credits say it takes less than a minute.”
The other let out a low huffing laugh, “I’ll take that bet. I’m gonna give the monkeys a little more credit and say they last a minute and a half.”
The Commander just stared with his lips curled around his gruesome black snout, his yellow eyes focus on me intently. “Remember, it’s not personal,” he said as he turned his hands and long clawed fingers up and shrugged innocently.
I dismissed my sidearm and put my hands up, “Any chance you guys are taking prisoners?”
Matty just looked at me, disgust and disappointment in his eyes, "What are you doing, Cap?”
As we stood there, the two Lycoans with their guns trained on Matty and I laughed. The Commander raised his rifle as the other two mercenaries that flanked him on either side lowered their weapons. They knew this fight was over.
“Sorry Human, no surrender allowed. We need your key and since you’re the designated faction leader we are just gonna have to finish you off.” He looked side to side grinning at his Lackeys, “As for the other two, we're just going to kill them for fun.”
He aimed his weapon directly at my head, preparing to fire. The mercenary directly behind me slammed the butt of his rifle into my back between the shoulders. I went down to one knee with a grunt and my health bar dropped slightly, signifying that I had received a little bit of damage.
I shook my head and stood back up, looking at the Commander, "Uhh, you might wanna check your six.”
Tiff appeared directly behind the Commander with her right fist outstretched in a punching motion. The fist was sticking through the Commander as she appeared.
She leaned forward and whispered in the Commander's ear, “It’s not personal Commander, but unfortunately two bodies can’t occupy the same space; it’s just physics.” She ripped her fist back through the Commander's body as he fell.
The remaining Lycoans panicked. I equipped my daggers and threw the left one straight into the mercenaries head that flanked Tiff from the right as she engaged the one on the left. Matty went to work immediately raising his weapon and tactically advancing toward the two Lycoans on our rear.
I dismissed my armor and leapt, doing a backflip into the air. I had an idea based on how my armor had reacted earlier, The Coeus told me I would have more control over the armor once I accepted the responsibility of wearing it. “The Gift” they had called it. I had become too reliant on my armor, and it was time to see if the gift would respond to my direction.
I landed behind the Lycoan mercenary that stood directly behind me. He had raised his weapon and fired wildly trying to follow my impossible jump. As I landed, I dismissed my remaining dagger and drove my new augmented arms forward, willing them to become long spikes.
It worked; the arms morphed into long black spikes impaling the mercenary from behind. I raised his body into the air and threw him at the Lycoan that Tiff was currently fighting as I willed the spikes to form back into arms.
I looked up at Matty. He was standing over his opponent, pistol in hand. The Lycoan was on the ground on all fours bleeding and panting. Matty turned, looked back at Jax lying on the ground behind us, then leaned down beside the injured Lycoan mercenary.
“I guess someone owes me 5 credits,” he said as he stood and pushed the barrel of the sidearm against the back of the Lycoan’s head and pulled the trigger, splattering blood and gore all over the ground as the Lycoan fell limply to the ground. Matty turned and walked back to his injured brother silently.
Tiff finished the remaining mercenary quickly. After being pummeled by the body of his fellow mercenary, he lay dazed on the ground and knew the fight was over. Tiff walked over pulled a dagger from her boot and slit his throat. The fight was over.
Tiff looked up at me, "How is Jax?”
“We need to get him into the HAB and get Claire back here as soon as possible. Tiff, is there anything you can do for him in the meantime?"
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Matty was now sitting with his brother's head on his lap trying to keep pressure on the wound.
“We have some first aid supplies. I can staunch the blood flow for now, but we need Claire to heal him,” Tiff said as she walked over to help Matty get Jax back into the HAB,
"We are currently engaging the Blemian faction. They were en route to our base camp when the Pup flew over them. CJ manned the Rover turret, and we did repeated flyovers. We took about 7 of them out before they were able to find any cover. I'm landing the Pup now so Loren and I can help finish off the last three, and then we will return to the HAB.”
It was still hard to comprehend that Tiff could be in two places at once operating completely independently of each other. I looked at her secondary body as she helped carry Matty into the HAB and identified her.
Tiffantrimore Clarivox
AI Guardian
*Level 10
*This guardian’s level has been capped at 10 for the duration of this dungeon.
That was weird. Tiff was normally Level 50. I assumed the Coeus capped levels to create some sort of level playing field, otherwise every faction would bring in high-level combatants to sweep the dungeon. It made sense but Tiff was going to have to be careful even against lower-level enemies. I would need to talk to her about it later, now wasn’t the time.
“Captain, you need to go loot those bodies. One will have their faction key, but the rest may have items of value. We can’t afford to overlook valuable loot," Tiff said as she continued to work on Jax's wounds.
Matty wasn’t leaving Jax’s side, and I couldn’t blame him. I hadn’t seen my brothers in years but if I were in his shoes I would be right there by my brother until I knew he was going to be okay.
I walked toward the exit to go loot the corpses, “Tiff, make sure you do everything you can. Jax is part of our crew, and he doesn’t deserve to die in the God-forsaken place.”
I walked out to loot the corpses, which is a weird thing to say, but this would be the first time I was able to loot anything. Tiff had mentioned it before, but so far, other than the tutorial, I had only fought mechs and spiders and they didn’t drop any loot.
I got to the two mercenaries that I hit with my pulsar blast first. Their heads were completely hairless and burnt to a crisp. The ability wasn’t necessarily meant to be offensive but against biological lifeforms, the blast was devastatingly effective. I leaned over to loot the first corpse. I assumed I would just go through their pockets or something, I wasn’t really sure how this worked.
When I identified the mercenary, my interface read:
Deceased Lycoan mercenary
Level 7 – Lootable corpse
Loot corpse? Y/N
I selected yes and a handy visual aid popped up showing the loot the corpse held.
Superior Health stim x 2
Lycoan Field rations x 5
Inferior land mine x 1
I took the stims and the land mine. I wasn’t sure how to use the mine, but it was worth keeping. When I selected what I wanted to take, it disappeared from the lootable inventory, and a new tab popped up in my interface that read:
Personal Storage
I was very familiar with my interface by this point, but this was new. I would ask Tiff, but I assumed that anything I looted would go into personal storage. “Handy,” I said to myself as I selected the personal storage tab and mentally selected the superior stim. The stim appeared in my hand just like that. I have no idea how it worked but it was there.
I got back to the task at hand and looted the rest of the mercenaries. None of them had anything of great value; a couple more land mines, and some regular health stims. They also had plenty of rations, but I was sure I didn’t want to try eating alien food, although the food Elvis had made for us couldn’t be much better.
I got to the Commander next, and he held a surprise when I pulled up his loot.
Lycoan Faction Key x 1
Area map – Partial
Interstellar Vacuum tube x 1
Lycoan field rations x 5
“Well, I guess I hit the jackpot,” I said as I looted it all. After looting everything there was an announcement on my interface:
Attention participants: The Lycoan Faction has been eliminated. The Human Faction now holds the Lycoan Faction Key. The Human F action now leads all factions with 2 keys. Reminder: The first faction to hold 5 keys will gain access to the Coeus Relay Station.
“Well, so much for the element of surprise,” I said as I shook my head in disgust. I took a minute to look at the Commander's loot. The first thing I pulled out and inspected was the Interstellar Vacuum Tube.
Interstellar Vacuum Tube – Upon arming and detonating, this tube will violently suck everything within a 10-meter radius toward it. The tube will be active for 20 seconds and, much like the vacuum of space, will continue to suck until the time expires. 5-second delay upon activation. Use with caution.
Next, I pulled out the key and inspected it.
Lycoan Faction Key – With the addition of this key your faction now holds two keys. Retrieve three more to gain access to the Coeus Relay Station.
“Seems simple enough,” I shrugged.
Lastly, I pulled out the map.
Area Map - Partial – This map will show a detailed topographical map of the battle arena, locations of enemy factions, or loot locations. Three partial maps will make a whole map.
“That explains the Interstellar Vacuum Tube.”
This section of the map showed loot locations in the area. It didn’t specify what the loot was, there were just little icons on the map that looked like treasure chests. Yes, treasure chests. I’m not sure if the super-advanced Coeus AI was trying to dumb things down or not but honestly, I had a chuckle at that.
“Headed back to basecamp, scratch 10 Blemians. Red and Loren are looting the corpses now and then we’re heading back. This seemed way too easy, Captain,” Tiff said over the Comms.
Attention participants: The Blemian Faction has been eliminated. The Human faction now holds the Blemian Faction Key. The Human Faction now leads all factions with 3 keys. Reminder: The first faction to hold 5 keys will gain access to the Coeus Relay Station.
“Alright Tiff, make it fast. I found some superior health stims that I'm bringing back to the HAB. Maybe we can stabilize Matty until you get here with Claire,” I said as I started making my way back to base camp.
“I don’t think it's going to get easier, Captain. We got lucky here and surprised the Blemians. Most of the factions sent their transport ships back to orbit rather than take a chance on getting stranded. We took and chance and kept the Pup down here and it paid off for now. Let's all regroup back at the HAB and try to build a sustainable plan to get those last two keys," Tiff said.
I thought for a second before responding, “Agreed, Tiff. We need a better plan of attack. We're not going to sit back and wait for everyone else to come after us. It’s time to take the fight to them.”
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