Buzz’s plan was fundamentally solid: Act normal to the last possible second so the goblins wouldn’t know they had been spotted, then escape in a burst of motion. The problem was he had delayed just a little too long.

The small solid-fuel engine ignited with a roaring red cloud, and then it sliced through the intervening space almost instantaneously.

‘Oh shit,’ was all Meathead had time to say.

In almost the same moment the rocket was igniting, Neb finally understood what his subconscious had been yelling at him: The emergency transport should have a roof.

Meathead had already said as much. But it was more than that. The Main were a galactic-level civilisation with command of practically unlimited energy and technological capability. They had built orbitals and subspace gates and Dyson spheres, they had terraformed worlds and spread across the galaxy and then maybe ascended to something beyond even any of that. And this was a fucking zoo. They didn’t need an escape vehicle to protect themselves from these animals. The transport was something for fun. Not for an emergency. But even so, it would need to keep the animals away from the observers. Like humans keeping away mosquitos, a minor irritation.

So: There must be a shield.

Neb pushed all of the symbols on the second control panel in the fraction of a second he had to act, and then the plasma rocket impacted.

The world lit up painfully brightly, but that brightness was enough to tell him what he most wanted to know: I am not dead.

The light lasted for several long seconds before it faded, painful even through his clamped-shut eyes. When he opened his eyes the transport was completely surrounded by fire, as if they had been submerged in it, golden red billows of flame rolling and forming and reforming. The flames were not much past arm’s reach and yet he felt only a gentle warmth. It made him think of the peaceful feeling of staring into a campfire, if that feeling had somehow been expanded to the entirety of experience.

Then the golden clouds faded away and the tunnel came back into view. But it had been shattered by the explosion. Little pools and rills of fire gathered on the broken floor. Melted rock ran in rivulets down the walls. A blast crater had been gouged into the tunnel surface, but the transport’s protection field had overlapped with the impact sphere of the rocket, leaving a half-moon shaped trench cut deep into the floor.

Mallory was first to react. He fired a quick burst of rounds from his pistol back down the tunnel, and there was a yelp of pain.

In the same moment Neb clamped down on the transport accelerator and the machine leaped forward, its six wheels bumping and spinning through the half-moon crater. Behind them they heard return gunfire from something heavy caliber, and Neb accelerated hard down the tunnel.

‘Doc, punch it out that exit,’ Buzz ordered. ‘These assholes might have friends waiting outside.’

But if there had been any goblins lying in wait, they had fled. The transport came up a shallow ramp and burst out into the bright day beyond, and they found themselves back in the tall grass, south of the cages.

‘Fucking made it!’ Meathead yelled. He slapped Neb on the shoulder hard enough to bounce him in the seat. ‘Fucking-A, Doc!’

‘Good work, soldier,’ Buzz said to Neb. ‘Now get us out of this goddam zoo.’

It was a relief to put some distance between them and the goblins. The machine pushed easily through the grass and Neb tracked their position on the map, heading due south out of the shaded area. At its edge the long grass just ended at a straight line, and again Neb was reminded of a game designer who hadn’t bothered with the finishing touches.

South of the zoo the terrain became rocky, scattered with sun-bleached vegetation and the occasional tree barely clinging to life. There were no roads or obvious trails, and it felt and looked like a different planet. The sun was hot and there was almost no shade or cover. It would have been a miserable place to walk through, Neb thought, and he suspected he’d know that first hand sooner or later.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Neb examined the transport symbols as he drove, searching for patterns or commonalities or things that might trigger his memory. He happened to be looking at the dashboard when a new symbol appeared, a series of interlocking curves that had a small rectangular bar in the center. There was a shaded area at the bottom which blinked on and off slowly and reminded Neb of breathing. He was pretty sure he knew what it meant.

‘Sir,’ he said to Buzz, and pointed. ‘I think that means low power on the transport.’

‘Noted,’ Buzz said.

‘Fucking Main,’ Mallory complained. ‘Wouldn’t they keep their truck charged?’

‘The real Main probably would,’ Neb replied, glancing over his shoulder at Mallory. ‘Or maybe they would build trucks that don’t need charging. But this transport doesn’t really belong to the Main. It belongs to the Game.’

‘Same fucking thing, Doc,’ Mallory snapped.

‘Not really,’ Neb replied, glancing over. ‘In the Game, this transport is a huge advantage. We’re basically invulnerable behind the shield and we can easily move all over the map. So the Game is not going to let us, or anyone else, use it for long. It tilts the balance too much.’

Mallory was silent. ‘Maybe,’ he grunted finally.

They drove on over ground that was sandy and rocky, striped with steep hills and the occasional gorge they needed to drive around. The military base was still five kilometers away to the south. The sun was baking hot, even though the environment in the transport was pleasantly cool. They kept driving until there was a series of gentle tones, too musical to be properly called beeps, and another flashing symbol appeared. They could feel a change around them, a different smell in the air and a suddenly rising temperature.

‘Shield is down,’ Neb said.

A short while later the transport’s speed dropped to a crawl. Neb followed Buzz’s directions and nestled the transport in between two low hills, and they came to a complete stop. It wasn’t much of a hiding place, but there wasn’t much else they could do.

When they had all got out, Mallory said to Buzz: ‘I still have two grenades.’ He nodded at the transport. Sacrilege, Neb thought, but said nothing. He knew Mallory was right to suggest it.

Buzz looked at the transport and then stared to the horizon. ‘I want to frag it,’ he said, ‘but the smoke would be visible for miles. Doc, any way to disable it internally? Any key we can yank out?’

Neb shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not, sir.’

‘All right then,’ Buzz said. ‘Nothing we can do but leave it as is. Let’s move out.’

Neb gave backward glances at the machine until it was out of view, lost amongst the dark jagged rocks. He had a sudden picture of what this area might be like in winter, deeply covered in drifting snow, keening winds whistling through the ravines. He felt a surge of curiosity to know more about this world, its seasons and moods and patterns and rhythms. Was it based on a real world, somewhere that the Main knew and perhaps liked? The sense of curiosity was a physical sensation, but he was pretty sure he would never know. He sighed and shouldered his backpack, and hurried to catch up with the others.

They walked south without seeing any movement. It was just as hot and difficult as Neb had guessed it would be, made worse at first by the recent memory of the comfort of the transport. But the bone-deep stoicism of the rest of the group was starting to wear off on Neb. Yes it was hot, and yes he didn’t have enough water, and yes the rocks were sharp enough to cut you if you stumbled. But moaning about it was not going to change anything. All there was to do was march.

They covered ground at a steady pace. The sun touched the horizon and the worst of the heat began to slacken. The rocks and stones gave way to level, sandy grassland. They saw the glittering curve of a river in the evening light, and a road cut diagonally across their path. In the middle distance were small but steep mountains, shaded in the evening light. The team stopped to drink water and eat some of the food they had brought from the hotel.

‘There’s a town by the base,’ Buzz said. ‘Abinaum. Mean anything to anyone?’ He addressed the question to the group, but stared at Neb.

‘No sir,’ Neb said after an instant of hesitation. The name actually rang a faint bell, but as he well knew, a vague intuition was a painful basis for a conversation with Buzz.

The commander was still looking at the map on his overlay. ‘The base looks like a pretty defensible position,’ he said. ‘Hard to get in, hard to get out. But get in and out we must. Ideas?’

‘We need recon,’ Gray said. ‘The Doc should come with me. He might recognise Main things in the town or the base.’

Neb tried to stop his eyes opening wider at the thought. ‘Of course,’ he said, hoping they would not see his true reaction.

‘Any other suggestions?’ Buzz asked.

‘I agree with Gray,’ Anna said. ‘Full frontal’s not going to work, even if we were locked and loaded, which we’re most definitely not. We need some stealth options, but we’re not going to be the only ones seeking them out. Like the Doc says, this military base is marked plainly on the map for everyone to see.’

‘OK,’ Buzz said. ‘Gray, Anna, Doc -- you three go and check it out. Over and back, don’t get too close. We’ve got no comms, so if you don’t rendezvous back here in two hours, you better be dead. Understood?’

‘Yes sir,’ they said together, and they sprang into action at once.