Doc had seen many things in her long life on Auraxis, but this new world she found herself in took the cake in weird things that had happened in her long life.
First thing’s first I suppose, she thought to herself. Take stock of the situation. This new HUD is rather odd.
Name:
Doc
Skills and Traits:
+
Level:
1
Stats:
+
Race:
Human (Augmented)
(Summoned)
Equipment:
+
Class:
Combat Medic
Magic Disciplines:
+
Exp:
0/10
Mana Regen:
5/Hr
She was puzzled, for there was no option to see the current map, nor a redeploy option with this new HUD. She looked over at her fellow Auraxians, seeing the two engineers still excitedly talking to eachother and occasionally gesticulating at both the MAX trooper and the Sunderer. So, it was one of those Sunderers, she sighed. Ever since Nanite Systems started equipping all three factions and sending out their own mercenaries, things went haywire. Vehicles appearing with heavy customizations like this one, soldier’s equipment becoming highly varied and non-standard like that MAX and engineer...
“Alright, you two, with me, we’ll check what’s out there and see how bad a situation we’re in,” the unhelmeted stranger said, pointing at two of the black-armored soldiers that stood on the opposite side of the room, and the trio calmly walked out. It was not long before carefully spaced gunshots started ringing out. Doc was slightly jealous as they left, they moved with far more cohesion and with purpose than her own fellows did back home.
“Hey there,” came a voice from Doc’s left. She turned and saw one of the soldiers had approached Doc with an arm outstretched, the one that had the red T symbols adorning her armor. “Name’s Sarah, looks like we’re both the medics of our respective groups.”
“I’m... Doc,” she replied, shaking Sarah’s hand. With a darkly sad chuckle, she continued; “I’m sorry, but I can’t remember my original name, being stuck in a perpetual war for a few hundred years can do that to you.”
“A few hundred years?” Sarah asked, aghast. “How is that possible?”
“Well, to make a long story short, the original colonization fleet landed on Auraxis a few centuries before the war officially broke out. Rebirth Nanites were created a few decades after the planet was colonized, making everyone functionally immortal,” she held out her Nano-Regen device, it was as big and bulky as it always was. The only difference from when she received it was the hundreds of little scratch marks along its frame, some re-scratched enough times to be fairly deep into the frame. “This little tool was what allowed us to revive soldiers from death on the battlefield, and all the factions in the war had similar devices for their combat medics. It allows us to fire streams of healing nanites to patch up our soldiers, no need for the old ways with needles, sutures, and painkillers though I still have them in my backpack in case of emergencies. Not long after the war broke out in 2845... my memory gets fuzzy. What I do know, however, is that while our calendars stay stuck at that date, time marched on.”
She removed her helmet and moved aside some age-thinned padding, exposing her short-cropped blonde hair. She pulled out a thick piece of folded plastic, set her helmet aside, and unfolded the plastic, and unfolded it some more, then some more again, until finally she had a page about the size of her torso. It was absolutely covered in hash-marks on both sides, and along the folds it was crinkled, exposing several layers of different colors. “I put one mark for every day that passed, but eventually I ran out of black ink, so I started using white. I’ve... repeated this process a few dozen times. I wasn’t the only one who did this, but I think I was the last one left who hadn’t lost their minds and... Became a shell.”
“A... shell?” Sarah asked after an uncomfortable silence. She had also taken off her helmet, fluffing out her long raven colored hair. A look of horror lay on her face, her hazel eyes wide.
“Yes, after the first decade, I noticed my fellow soldiers and some friends were acting... different. They had lost all their personality, didn’t speak at times or when they did, it was all ‘I need ammo!’ ‘I need a medic!’ ‘Where’s the doc?’ ‘The suits should cut you a bonus check.’ Over and over! It was maddening! Not long after, all our HUDs got upgraded with a text interface in the upper left corner that we couldn’t shut off,” Doc took a deep breath to steady herself. She saw it was still there, but blank. “The conversations that soon followed... None of them made sense. It was like they were talking about events on a completely different planet!”
She shuddered at the memories that surfaced. “I... had a friend still in the Terran Republic area who told me of a similar thing happening in her faction one day, after we had recognized eachother during a small biolab fight and found a brief window to talk to eachother without the others interfering. The next time I saw her a few years later, she didn’t recognize me. I can only assume there was something similar happening to the Vanu as well. It wasn’t long before our military structure disintegrated in favor of these things called ‘outfits’ that just... sprang up out of nowhere one day. There were no more regiments, no more companies... the biggest you could ever see were platoons, and even then a lot of them fought as individuals, not an organized whole.”
Doc sighed again and leaned against the wall, running her hand through her hair. “When I got the summons to come here, an orbital strike from our own lines was about to hit us over in Helios Solar to deny the Vanu that location. One thing that rapidly became apparent with the Rebirth Nanites, and became especially prevalent in the Conglomerate, was what eventually became accepted as ‘teamkilling’. Sometimes it served a purpose, like the orbital strike that would have killed me, by securing a capture zone or clearing out an enemy spawn point,” she jerked a thumb at the Sunderer, “but sometimes I swear the ‘Shells’ did it just for the fun of it.”
“Speaking of teamkills,” one of the engineers walked up, rubbing the back of his helmet. “We uh, aren’t sure if the nanites work the way we’re used to. Sundy’s gonna take some time to get repowered up, damn thing was damaged pretty bad before it got here with us. Fire suppression system’s shot, all four rear wheels are flat, and the Ranger in the back has a half magazine left. The trawler in front’s got a half dozen magazines left, and the dozer blade and deployment hydraulics look like they might still work, but other than that we aren’t sure.”
“That’s... not good,” Doc replied, folding up her sheet and placing it back in her helmet. “Did you check the crew compartment? I can’t remember if there’s actual seats, all I remember is digitizing into it with the nanites like everyone else.”
“Yeah, but it’s only got six actual seats,” the engineer replied. “Two in front, one for each turret, and two near the rear door. The rest of the space is taken up by a nanite tank, and it’s about a quarter full. Damn thing’s got a hole on the right side about a third of the way up, judging by the size and the way the hole pierced through the armor of the Sundy, I think it was a Magrider’s main cannon that did it. Oh, name’s Engi. Can’t remember my ol’ name, the other guy though, looks like he was yoinked from when the whole war kicked off. His name’s Joey. And the MAX... it’s Max.”
“Like...” Sarah started.
“Short for Maximillian. Turns out he was one of the original MAX suit pilots. Suffering from a bit of Shell-syndrome, looks like it’d only been less than a day for him, and whoever was in charge kitted him out with all those suit upgrades when they got the chance.”
Sarah and Doc sighed in relief. Max stomped off out of the door, and soon the sounds of large-gauged shotgun blasts rang out from the hallway. The AI hologram was gently poking at the silhouette of the man called Fel, who had been laying in an undignified heap against the wall ever since the turn of the hour had hit. Doc could see a timer above Fel’s head, which kept increasing with each gunshot.
“How long till you think you can get the Sunderer operational?” Doc asked Engi. He put a hand to his chin in thought, then sighed.
“Well, if the nanites in my repair tool regenerate charges, not long,” he shrugged. “This new world’s definitely screwed with our equipment, my tool says it’s got ten charges remaining. I’m not entirely sure what that means, it’s always had infinite use back home, when it wasn’t overheated of course. Ammo packs’re the same, though both of mine only have three charges each. I’m not sure if that’s one charge per ammo pack use, or if each pack can only reload three magazines. Right now, I’m not keen on finding that out just yet. It’s gonna take Joey and I a few hours to get things ready. Hopefully within the hour we’ll see if the ol’ girl turns on. If the sundy can, then it’ll make our job a whole lot easier.”
He patted Doc on the shoulder, then meandered back to the Sunderer where he immediately got to work with his partner on running further diagnostics on the vehicle, Joey was currently half-hanging out the front door of the vehicle. Doc shrugged and secured her helmet to her belt.
“Might as well go introduce myself to the rest of your group,” she said in a more light-hearted tone. Sarah nodded and started leading the both of them over to where the other people stood looking over the other vehicle and one of the ammunition nodes. Doc also took this opportunity to take a look at one of her status screens.
Health:
150/150
Shield:
0/10
Mana:
15/15
Stamina:
22/22
Hunger:
99/100
Thirst:
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
98/100
Aim:
130
Magic:
150
Agility:
88
Perception:
94
Constitution:
150
Strength:
71
Fellowship:
151
Willpower:
155
Intelligence:
148
Wisdom:
124
“I wonder what all these numbers mean?” Doc muttered aloud once she got near the group, slightly worried that her shield was depleted and significantly less than what she was used to back on Auraxis. She looked up and saw that two of the other soldiers had removed their helmets, revealing two scarred men. One of which had an eyepatch on his left eye and heavy burn-scarring along that side of his head. The remaining soldier was crouched down, looking at the ammunition node.
“Hello there, Corporal James Eckort,” the one-eyed man rumbled out while holding out a hand. Doc shook it.
“Doc,” she replied. “Just... Doc.”
“Private Natasha,” the still-helmeted soldier chimed in.
“Specialist Gregor Jaeger,” said the other man, hefting what looked to Doc like a Terran Republic MAX rocket launcher. He was also covered in a plethora of pouches and grenades. “I also go by ‘Boomer’.”
“Pleasure to meet you,” Doc replied, then looked down as Natasha gave a huff of displeasure.
“Well, it looks like we have only two full depletions for this node,” Natasha blurted out. “Good for the short term, not so good for the long term. Interface says that we can take out up to twenty-five magazines for any five weapons we have available. So, what do we need?”
“Well, the gun on the Warthog still works,” James chimed in. “Shame the damn thing isn’t drivable at the moment, something wrecked the front seats good. It’ll take us a while to jury-rig the controls, if we’re able to at all. That, and the front left wheel arm is completely missing, and the hydrogen tanks are empty. Plus side, the winch looks like it’ll still work once we get it powered up again.” He paused and took a breath. “Man, I missed that style of ‘hog, the new ones you can’t easily just replace a wheel-arm, gotta do a whole lot more maintenance. Let’s take a full round of magazines for it, should last us a while.”
Natasha nodded and opened up the Ammunition Node’s lid after selecting the [M41 Vulcan] option. Inside lay twenty-five boxes of ammunition for the chaingun on the top of the vehicle. She lifted the first box, noting it was only three-hundred rounds. Enough for fifteen minutes of sustained fire. Won’t last us all that long, she thought to herself. With the help of James, she started moving the boxes to the warthog’s rear deck and hooked the belted ammunition to the feed system in the rear.
Jaeger in the meanwhile was rather happy that the shotgun ammunition he selected came in full boxes of thirty rounds each. This’ll last me a long time, he thought to himself smugly. Five reloads per box, should only take one shot per target.
Doc shrugged and attempted to use the box herself, but was unpleasantly notified with a notification.
[Weapon Incompatibility detected. No ammunition available for the NS-66 Punisher nor Integrated Adaptive Underbarrel Launcher.]
She made a mue of disappointment and decided to see what she could do to help the engineers with their task.
Max was having a much better day now that he was in this new world, he reflected as he fired into another undead human’s skull. Said head made a very satisfying splash of crimson and gray viscera as the buckshot impacted and continued on through another six zombies, only killing another two. He and the three others had managed to push back the undead to the other side of Shreddy, who had another fifteen minutes before waking back up, and the four soldiers had been fighting for about twice that.
He continued firing his weapon even as the trio that had preceded him had to retreat to gather more ammunition, but started to run low on ammunition himself. When he had one full magazine remaining, he began retreating, leaving Shreddy with just three minutes left on the timer to reawaken. As he walked back, he noted that some of the corpses that had been previously killed on his side of Shreddy were starting to twitch. He rapidly, but calmly, backed up until there were no more undead corpses behind him and he noted the ones closest were definitely twitching.
He looked to his new stat-screen, wondering if something was amiss.
Name:
Maximillian
Skills and Traits:
+
Level:
1
Stats:
+
Race:
Human (Augmented)
(Summoned)
Equipment:
+
Class:
Shock Trooper
Magic Disciplines:
+
Exp:
100/10
Mana Regen:
1/Hr
Health:
600/600 (300/300)
Shield:
0/0 | [200/200]
Mana:
5/5
Stamina:
12.5/12.5 (25/25)
Hunger:
95/100
Thirst:
93/100
Aim:
145
Magic:
50
Agility:
50 (100)
Perception:
100
Constitution:
202
Strength:
600 (200)
Fellowship:
97
Wisdom:
80
Intelligence:
95
Willpower:
125
He raised a metaphorical eyebrow at the stats he had, wondering what the numbers in parentheses meant. He didn’t get much time to pursue that thought as the closest corpse started violently spasming as various body parts lying nearby began to slowly, then quickly fly to be absorbed by one of the previously dead corpses that stood back up.
He took a few more steps backwards as the ghoul stood up on four misshapen legs, with three arms on the right side and one extended arm on the other. Its head had swelled in size, the open maw lacking a lower jaw but filled with dozens of teeth. It took one shambling step forward before he shot it in the head. The corpse fell backward from the impact sans a head and lay still.
For a few moments. The corpse soon started spasming again as the limbs and body parts it had absorbed tore themselves apart and began their way to other corpses that lay nearby. Not even the torso was left in place, the ribcage bursting forth and scuttling its way to a zombie that was starting to rise on the other side of Shreddy. Max activated his drill attachment just as another zombie rose up, and thrust the grinding head into the corpse. In moments, the head and torso of the zombie were pulped, and it dropped to the ground. The limbs slithered to other zombies that were rising up, but the torso stayed as a pulpy mass.
He flicked on his right arm-mounted energy shield, thankful that that piece of equipment still worked, as spurs of bone were fired at him from a large zombie that had just stepped onto the writhing group of zombies that had filled up Shreddy’s chute. Max frowned as his shield went down to 76%, and he thrust his drill at another undead and pulped it as well, and he extended the drill while still in the torso to force it to fall away. At least this works! Always hated not being able to use a gun with the shield. Never made sense, probably something the NS forced on us.
There was a shriek from the pit as Shreddy’s timer ran out and he woke back up. In moments, the ghoul that had fired at Max dropped like a pallet of bricks and erupted into viscera and gore, painting the ceiling-pit red that slowly dripped down to the ground. Max sighed in relief, used his shield to smash another zombie into Shreddy, and turned his drill off. He noted that he received more exp from that specific zombie than he had from the normal ones he had shot up, a whole whopping fifteen versus the one or two he had gotten from the others.
He kept his shield up as he walked back, mindful of Fel’s warning about the levelup curse. Two large walking boulders passed him by, pushing other corpses back into Shreddy with their sheer size and weight, then sat down right on the edge of Shreddy, blocking a significant portion of the hallway. Alongside them was another of the black-clad soldiers who hefted a grenade and tossed it over the horde’s head. When he heard a satisfying kaboom past the golems, Max deactivated his shield and walked back into the room where he and the others had been summoned.
As he stepped in, he paused as he saw the tri-barreled weapon from the other vehicle pointing his way. It immediately was pointed away by the person who was standing behind hit, much to his relief.
“Sorry ‘bout that!” Said the person on the gun. “Bit of a precaution in case those zombies get past the golems.”
“All good,” Max replied, then walked over to the Sunderer. He saw Doc and the engineers hard at work doing something in the cabin. Several more explosions rang out from the hallway. I guess that works. Grenades do tend to work better in enclosed areas, after all.
“Alright, start ‘er up!” Came the voice of Engi from the back. Doc pulled a lever and the Sunderer came to life. The lights turned on in the cabin as well as around the vehicle. Cheers erupted from the four Auraxians as the Sunderer moved to it’s deployed status, the wheels rising a few inches off the ground as the mighty pistons and stabilizers extended out with satisfying thunks. A blue screen popped into existence on the side nearest Max and he immediately went to check on it.
He was immediately disappointed by the fact that all the options he had to change his gear were grayed out. He could not even select a new class, all those options were blacked out.
[Class Reassignment unavailable until you have achieved Level 25.]
He flipped through the menus, noting that he could do some cosmetic changes, like changing his armor’s color, but that was it. He noticed his fellow Conglomerates behind him were getting antsy, so he backed out with a sigh, noting he still had a few minutes left before he would be forced unconscious. He rested his eyes for a moment, and opened them when a blue glow appeared through his eyelids.
“Can I help you, miss?” Max asked Angela, who was standing in front of him.
“I know you’re about to have that levelup sickness, but would you mind if I asked for your help with a quick experiment?” She asked politely.
“What kind of experiment?”
“I’d like to see if we can unlock the schematic for your armor and weapons, so if we ever have to make another one, or fix your current one, we can do so a bit easier. I’ve already done a few tests with the UNSC weapons, and with the resources of one gun was able to remake it as if it hadn’t been absorbed by the dungeon.” She replied. Max considered this for a moment.
“Alright, but it will have to wait until I wake back up. These suits haven’t had to be opened the old way in god knows how long, I’m going to need to remember how to hop out.”
“If you’d allow me one moment?” Angela placed a hand on his helmet without waiting for him to say anything. His interface went staticy for a second, then his armor opened up around him, letting him step outside his armor from the front. “There we go. I’ll say, your suit’s cybersecurity is just... How do I put this politely?”
“It sucks?” Max offered. Angela nodded enthusiastically.
“It is like someone put in a locked gate over a pathway, but forgot to put a fence on either side, and forgot to put any material over the frame of the gate, leaving a giant hole.” She finally stated, disappointment written very clearly upon her face. They both watched as the armor sank into the ground, and Angela reeled back as if physically struck.
“Oh, so that’s how Fel feels whenever he gets new schematics,” she said quietly. “Alright, let me remake that for ya hon.”
Max gazed at the wall as the armor returned to the physical realm. It started first as a wireframe, then an opaque blue hologram. It finalized as the armor he knew, and he noted that a few of the dings and scratches that he’d picked up on Auraxis in his final hours there were missing. He looked at the AI and raised an eyebrow.
“It didn’t take any expensive or exotic materials to fix those dents,” she shrugged. “Though if we wanted to make an entirely new one... We’re going to need a lot of resources. Iron, copper, titanium, plastic, rubber, and a little bit of thorium, just to name a few. If you’d like, I can upgrade your suit’s software so it can resist getting hacked in the future.”
“Sure, go ahead,” Max replied, feeling lethargic. “Here’s hoping that’s just a paranoid precautionary measure.”
In moments, Max and the trio from earlier were passed out along the side of the room. The starstone golem walked in a minute later, dragging Jaeger by his boot, a half-hour timer above his head.