Sing it to the stars
Soulara was as far away from the cartoon feel of Colors as anything Gradie could imagine. The textures, sounds, even sensations, were all multifaceted and multi layered.
They were in some kind of transport ship. Two rows of seats facing each other with a thin window glowing in a door on one end, and the dark angle of a closed ramp on the other. The floor between the seats was textured for grip (and maybe to drain blood or oil) and pocked with dings and scars. The suits (seven in total not counting Gradie) of the passengers were varied, flashing in mirror polish in places and sinking in dark matte in others. Some had full face helmets, some only goggles or masks. The weapons ranged from long, tightly held rifles with floating barrels like a fifty cal, to dual-wielded crescents that may have been pistols.
The noise was just as textured as the rest of it. A deep roar punctuated by whooshes and clangs rose out of the rubber floor, the engine whined at the front near the cockpit and a turbine growled at the rear. Explosions echoed. Gunfire came in as hollowed out whispers, like sounds with the shape of shell casings.
Gradie turned his rifle over in his hands. A good bit longer than the short barreled ARs the team preferred in the Hardworlds, something in his head, like the Otherworld’s favored dream knowledge communication system (now announcing itself as a computer), told him all about it. How many rounds, how to reload the small canisters in his armored pack, different firing modes and attachments, ranges and deficiencies. He glanced over at the suits on the benches next to him. He spotted Angel’s Kendo mask, a helmet that resembled a welding mask with a circular glass pane, and the standard sci-fi shock troop helmet he had seen himself and Luke put into just minutes before, though the idea that it had only been that long felt strange to him. Surely he had been in this new world for hours.
One thing he did not see was Nova’s cowboy hat, and he quickly found out why.
The whole ship swayed in a sudden but decidedly un-jerky motion that rocked the helmeted heads to one side in unison.
“You dodging rockets bro?” Luke said on the comms.
“No we’re taking the low route,” Nova said. “Undercity. Less anti air, but it takes more finesse to get around these pipes and shit. Oh, and talk on the group comms.”
“Sup yall,” Luke said, his voice suddenly just as textured as the rest of the world. Gradie only then realized how pure the thought voices on their private comms were. Angels voice now reverbed in the helmets, and the game’s tutorial dream knowledge told Gradie how his would respond automatically to his speech.
The voice chat erupted in ‘hey’s and ‘whatsup’s and the system, whatever it was, displayed everyone’s usernames in glowing letters above their head, and Gradie found his computer (whatever it actually was) had the option to display the status of his group in a HUD. His team members, Luke and the twins, were edged in neon green, while the rest of the group was more of an aqua. There were also options to open private one-on-one coms with individual members, inspect their gear and recent kill/death history, their public profile, even request to join their clan.
Like all Otherworldly “software” that he had encountered, from beverage kiosks to his wallet watch to the quasi computers of the twins HQ, it was infinitely more fluid than a real-world program, responding and adapting to his thoughts and expectations in real time, and the machine-feel of Gunmaze he had encountered at first had essentially disappeared.
Once, when he had been trying to wrap his head around how some function of the Vault was possible in a world of dreamforms, Angel had told him that creating “schema” in the Other was like working with something liquid and alive.
“The Other is smart. It thinks. It remembers. If you try and make something on your own, it falls apart like paper mache with no glue. The Other is the grand materia, we’re just weaving our requests into it.”
Now, sitting in something so clearly suspended by a myriad of laws and principles, interacting with software created by someone far away and far gone, Gradie knew what he meant. Flying around the other and seeing buildings and structures sitting dead still, inert remnants of a past thought, or seeing a landscape responding in real time to present intentions, was one thing, but the complexity of what was wrapped around him here, a secondary world comprised entirely of its own logic separate from the texture of the Other and interactable only with his mirror-made avatar, made something in his mind click, and the dramatic and partially terrifying possibility of the Other opened once again in his thoughts like a map unfurling.
His reverie was broken by a sudden lurch that sent the front of the ship rising steeply.
“All right, we’re breaking up to the surface,” Nova said. “Get ready to jump. I’m gonna back us up into the drop site then land down in the base.”
The guy at the ramp end of the row across from Gradie, who’s nameplate said Maverick, started barking in a gruff, middle-aged voice.
“Ok, new guys! Just in case you don’t know, no disrespect, but call out what you see, what you shoot, what shoots you, where you are and where you’re going. No solo flanking, no bombs without comms. Got it?”
“Yes Sir!” Luke said in an exaggeratedly nasal voice, while sitting overly erect and saluting with a knife-hand to his forehead. Gradie’s “Aight” broke into a laugh halfway through, though Angel’s “right” had an unwavering seriousness that somehow sounded less respectful than Lukes outright mocking.
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“They’re Quasar’s boys, Maverick. Let him handle them,” the guy with the dual pistol things said, who’s nameplate said “Mr. Mackintosh”.
“And just cause you fuckin going out first to draw sniper fire, don’t mean you’re captain sergeant.”
“Snipers live in your head rent free, ay Mack?” Maverick said in a smooth tone far removed from his earlier barking, and the rest of the group laughed. One nudged Mack with an elbow, and he got as animated as he could while strapped into the bench.
“Man that bitch got lucky! She was aiming for Sully!” he motioned at the big guy next to him “And I got in the way.”
“Well don’t get in the way,” a female voice said, from the trooper holding what looked like either a grenade launcher or some kind of machine gun, and who’s nameplate said “BledRobbn”.
Mack bounced in his seat and shook his helmet.
“Oh ok then, bet. I’ll be far away from yall motherfuckers. Don’t start crying when there’s no one there to soak up all the bullets.”
The others laughed, and the trooper next to Mack, a small, densely armored figure that reminded Gradie of a W40k mini, and who’s nameplate said “ChknMiniNuke” patted his back in a mock gesture of concern.
The ship swung around in a stomach-churning jerk and came to a sudden stop.
“Backing up! On your marks!” Nova said over the speakers. The mood in the ship instantly changed, and everyone else snapped up, picking up every bit of slack in the strange harnesses, held their weapons at the ready, and faced the ramp.
Gradie followed suit and held his rifle at low ready. There was a brief moment of stillness, when even the noise outside seemed to hold its breath, and then the lights over the ramp turned green, an alarm chimed with a single ‘annnngggghhh’, and the ramp door exploded open like it was on dynamite hydraulics.
“Moving!” the guy at the end of Gradie’s row yelled, (Who’s nameplate read “Sulphyr”) as the straps on his chest and on Maverick across from him snapped open at the same time as the door. The two of them shot down the ramp with Sulphyr keeping his weapon aimed dead ahead while Maverick swung his around, checking the glass wall of the tower looming ahead of them.
Like a synchronized dance, the straps on Mack and Angel burst open a second later, and they bolted down the ramp after the first two.
Then Gradie’s straps exploded off his chest, and he fell forward right into Chkn MiniNuke.
“Wahh!” she yelled, in a very un shock-trooper way, as they both crumpled halfway to the ground.
“Shit, sorry,” Gradie said, as laughter erupted behind him.
“Got you bro,” Luke lifted him up off the ground by a drag strap on the back of his armor, and Gradie had flashbacks of casualty training in the Clubhouse. Luke threw him forward and he ran out the ramp with his weapon snapped into place, as if he could both run from and gun down his shame.
The other four were already across the ramp and set up around an opening in the side of the glass tower. Gradie sprinted across the ramp and a massive sensation of distance pressed in on his peripherals. They were over a mile up in the air, and a forest of towers stretched out towards the horizon under a grey half-storm sky. Things flashed and boomed and smoked at the edge of his vision, but he kept his eyes on the ground at his feet and sprinted past the other players.
He formed up at the edge of their formation, aiming his rifle at a door in the far wall of the room. Two rows of strange machines sat under diffused window light at one end, and the other end had clusters of circular seating arranged around nothing as far as Gradie could see, and beyond that was a frosted glass wall with a singular door in it.
“What is this?” He said out loud, his voice having the awkward crack it always did when he spoke for the first time around strangers.
“Think it supposed to be like a rec room,” ChknMiniNuke said. “This is like workers quarters I think?”
“Yeah. This is the condos,” Maverick said. “We’re headed for the skybridge that links it to the main lab tower. Lab tower’s full of computers and equipment so its structurally hardened. Good place to set up the artillery bay.”
The broken window behind them suddenly let in a wash of sunlight as the ship dropped down silently out of sight, and Gradie brought his gun around in a flash, stepping to the outside of the group and leaning so he didn’t flag them, the words “contact rear” already forming on his tongue, before he realized what had happened.
“Damn, dudes quick!” Mack laughed.
“I’m dropping her off at the base for a spawn point,” Nova said on the comms. “Meet me at the elevator lobby before yall cross the bridge.”
“Understood,” said Maverick. “All right, form up. Same order as the drop ship.”
“Yes Mam. Saving the best for last,” Luke said in a friendly purr to BledRobn, who’s body language as she nodded and turned away said that if helmets could blush hers would have. The formation built up with Gradie and ChkMiniNuke second to rear in front of Luke and BledRobn, then Angel and Mack, with Maverick and Sulphyr staggered at the front.
Maverick motioned to one of the walls next to the door.
“Sulphyr, get a beam tapped”
Sulphyr took something out of his pouch, stepped up to the wall, and punched a hole in it. He looked inside, clearly didn’t like what he saw, and punched another one. This time, he ripped at the material, a quasi-drywall that flaked away like tempered glass, until the hole was wide enough for Gradie to see the shining metal of the frame. Sulphyr clipped something to the metal and pressed a button.
There was a sequence of three tones in Gradies helmet and then a mini map appeared on the HUD, showing their rooms and the rest of the floor.
“Towers mapped, Quasar. You good?”
“Yeah got it,” Nova said on the comms. “Elevators dead center. I’m dropping her in the Garage.”
“Ok, on me,” said Maverick. They proceeded out the door, which slid open with a hiss. Gradie’s computer told him how he could toggle between night vision, thermal, and something called “wide band” which would let him detect shortrange comms or something, as they moved down the hallway, turned in through a dark kitchen, strange futuristic machines sharing space with gas burners and copper and cast iron pans, and out across a wide empty cafeteria space.
“This looks like an ambush waiting to happen,” Mack said.
“You’d rather cut through the office floor and check all those cubicles, be my guest,” Maverick said softly.
“Been scanning this tower for hours,” BledRobin said. “No signs of life. Biggest concern right now is if we tripped any unseen sensors, in which case move your ass because we damn sure don’t want them catching us here.”
As they passed under a skylight at the center of the space, Gradie saw streaks of fire flying through the darkening sky. Though the glass was tinted, he guessed it was probably either turning evening outside, or the storm he had seen on the ramp had moved in. thinking back, he wasn’t sure if it had really been storm clouds, or a mass of smoke from some unseen part of the city’s decimation.
They streamed out of the doorway in a tight formation, moving past the fatal funnel quickly and fanning out into the room beyond. Beyond some small differences, it was a move that could have been made in the clubhouse or the Hardworlds. Gradie squeezed the rifle in his hand and felt his boots plant to the ground. This was a game he could have some fun with.