Regina had set him up with a home version of the game, crude in comparison to the sarcophagus, but serviceable for simple at home recreation. The improved headsets were still advanced enough to make him feel like he was really on an alien world. The gloves had made for an easy transition from the real world to the virtual.
Enrique, as Aurelio Ironsides, was relaxing in one of the many hot springs in the Rokaos section of Sanctuary. The gamepad draped over his gaming chair heated up, relaxing tired muscles as Aurelio people-watched. Cosmic Horizons had an engaging story, but moments like this made Enrique understand Reggie's vision for this game becoming a digital afterlife. The thought was appealing, if slightly terrifying, on an existential level.
A notification symbol appeared in the corner of his vision. Flicking his eyes to it he saw that Lazar Boomslang was sending a video message request. Surprised, Aurelio accepted the call and a handsome Jrassk's face appeared.
Lazar was tan with brown stripes, a long muzzle, and emerald green eyes. The feathered crest was daffodil yellow and braided on the top of his head. A smug-looking chameleon AI was draped on his shoulder. Aurelio wasn't shocked at all by his appearance. Lazar always had a thing for reptiles. A Jrassk wasn’t much different than his raptor Vtuber avatar.
"Hey Lazar! Looking good!"
Lazar beamed, "Hey, you too! You're a Rokaos, right? Makes sense, kinda space Dwarf-y. I dig the gold horns."
"Thank you!" Aurelio sat up, "So how'd you get a copy of Cosmic Horizons?"
"Silky sent me a copy. I think some of the other Deck Punchers got one, too," he explained. "I don't know if we'll get any other takers, though. That NDA isn't joking around."
Aurelio nodded, "You'll understand why eventually. I don't know how much you've been told, but this could become more than just a game."
"I'm getting that impression," Lazar nodded. In a more somber tone, he asked, "how are you holding up? I saw you've been streaming, but when I tried to raid you, you were already finished."
Aurelio sighed shakily, "It's hard. But I'm doing my best. Just trying to get back to normal, but I don't think it ever will be again. How're you? And how’s the company? It must be difficult taking over so suddenly."
Lazar shrugged, "Like you said, it's hard. The team's in mourning, you know? Everyone loved Ryan. But videos are still coming out, checks are being signed, and games are being developed. We'll make it work."
"Good," Aurelio relaxed. "So, you just get in?
Lazar nodded, "Yup! I was just about to start the tutorial, but I saw you were logged in."
Aurelio stood and let the lava slough off him, "Let me dry off, and I'll walk you through some of it. It'll be good to catch up!"
"Awesome!" Lazar exclaimed, "It's too bad Ryan's not here. He'd love this game."
Aurelio shook his head with a sad smile, "Knowing him, he'd already be up to his elbows in shenanigans."
"I call shenanigans!"
Orion was fist fighting a flamingo. What even was his life anymore? The whole area was filled with glowing neon flamingos. Not only that, they were decked out in shutter shades, backward caps, and blue hi-tops with lightning bolt logos. The whole flock was skating around the bizarre area on skateboards, performing sick flips and wicked grinds. The maniacs!
Orion's first stop was the left bridge across the crater. He wanted to check out the thorny black brambles, which now looked similar to the big tree poking up from the underground zoo. He'd read the report on the Org?an animal exhibit being empty. Orion wondered if this tree was the reason there were still animals on the surface. Once he'd gotten closer, however, any evidence of tunnels had been weathered away by the sandstorms.
The area was strange. A few hundred feet from the branches was a crashed semi-truck, a futuristic one with hover wheels. The trailer had crashed in the center of an electric blue swamp of bubbling liquid. It looked as if it had once been a mobile stage trailer. The backdrop was of a beach, complete with palm trees and a picture of an Org teen doing a kickflip. Empty boxes marked 'Swag' were half submerged in the soda swamp. Electricity arced upwards between the twisted branches like a Jacob's Ladder. The neon sign on the stage flickered but read simply, 'Bolt! The Quenchifyer!'. There was a pool of blue bubbly liquid on the field, spreading out from the center display.
The bramble branches had grown in odd patterns, forming loops and ramps. Orion saw several of the glowing rad flamingos, or flairmingos, using the branches like a skate park. He saw a few of the flairmingos using their sharp beaks to carve flat paths on the brambles.
One of those beaks was aimed at him. He barely dodged a sharp peck to the face, only to get a skateboard to the shin. Gemini was shooting sonic blasts at the stylish birds, but they were too agile. A bird wearing a blue headband and leg warmers opened her beak and fired a column of lightning that nearly fried the King. They were too fast for Major as well. The cyworg did manage to land a lucky bite on a flairmingo and got a powerful electric shock for his trouble. He dropped the wounded bird and backed away, tail drooping.
As the neon pink wall of feathers closed in, Orion stepped backward and felt his foot land in a puddle of blue 'water.' He was immediately electrocuted and took some significant damage before he was able to stumble back to dry land.
"Let's jet, boys!" Orion scrambled to his feet, "These guys are too strong for us!"
Orion ran and jumped onto Major's back as he fled, Gemini driving alongside the cyworg. Orion leaned over and scooped Gemini up by the tail, settling them on his lap. As they fled back to the bridge, Orion opened up his map and marked Bolt Swamp on the map.
Orion wondered what kind of weird eighties nostalgia kick the programmer was on when they designed this planet. It was making for some odd encounters already. He wondered if a flairmingo would make for a good partner, but dismissed the idea. What constellation could be a good name for a skateboarding flamingo, anyway?
Max woke up to the sounds of a medidrone monitoring his vitals. As his senses slowly started flooding in, he heard a synthetic voice announce, “Captain Max Thrustar has regained consciousness.”
Max's eyes flew open as his memories of the last few days came back in a rush. The sphere robot! Dinosaurs! Orion's mutation! What happened to his team? Fighting through the aching in his chest, Max struggled to sit up. The medidrone started making warning sounds as Max grabbed weakly at various tubes in his chest.
Slender vine-like fingers gently, but very firmly pressed him back down on the bed. "You're not going anywhere," Junip commanded.
"Team attacked! Orion died!" croaked Max.
"Your people are fine. Orion is-" Junip hesitated, “-better. You, however, are not. And after you promised me you wouldn't get hurt."
Max lay back but didn't relax, "What happened?"
Junip leaned in, zir voice filled with barely suppressed anger. "Maximilian Aloysius Thrustar, you told me you'd be careful! You go down there for a simple exploration and leveling mission and come back to me on a stretcher with your chest caved in. It took all of your med packs to keep you alive long enough for your men to get you to me!"
Max knew he was in trouble when ze started using his full name. He took a minute to relax and gather his thoughts. "In my defense, the rookie was riding one around like a pony. How was I to know one would just lash out like that?"
Max stopped as something warm dropped on his cheek. He reached up with a shaky hand and touched his face, pulling away an amber droplet of warm sap. He looked up and saw that Junip's shoulders were shaking. Another bead of sap fell from zir face and splashed his chin.
Oh no, this was so much worse than a bunch of broken ribs! He'd made Junip -cry!- Gritting his teeth against the pain, he reached up and cupped zir shoulders.
"No." Junip stood up and pushed Max away.
Even the gentle shove to the shoulder sent shooting pain through his entire chest. "Aaugh!"
Junip gasped with dismay and immediately reached out. Ze pulled back before touching him again and snapped at the medidrone, "Up his painkillers! Baby, I am so sorry!"
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Max's eyes were squeezed shut, and his voice pinched with pain, "All good. My fault. "
"No, it's mine. I just get so worried when you're out there risking your life!" Junip wiped zir eyes, "You promised me this was supposed to be a safer job! After just a few years of watching over a simple mining operation, we could retire! Have a place of our own! Start a family."
Max's breath became less labored as the painkillers started to kick in. He lay there and tried to think about the assignment. It was supposed to be an easy job. The Manifest Institute normally sends out a bunch of low-risk criminals to an unpopulated world, where they dig up the resources to send back to the company. They basically buy their freedom through the work program, and then they can colonize the planet. But this time, things were off right from the start.
He'd learned from Junip that these colony missions all followed the same protocol. Prisoners who had a high probability for rehabilitation were sent off to boarder worlds where they could work off their debt to society. After serving their sentence they could either stay on the new colony and be given land to homestead, or be allowed to return to their homes and families. The bulk of the inmates were usually white collar criminals, or blue collar criminals without a history of violence.
This crew was different. The bulk of them were the expected sort of prisoner, but a few hundred of them were really dangerous. Gangsters, mercenaries, revolutionaries, and mad scientists. Not enough of them to set off any warning bells, but enough to question how such a gross oversight had happened in the first place. Sometimes, the company just needed warm bodies to reach sustainable numbers, which is why guards were sent to oversee operations.
Except this time, the company also dropped them off in this desert world. Usually, the company transport ship chooses one that can at least support life. Instead, they'd all woken up from the stasis sleep on a planet that was literally toxic. They'd had to wear BioSuits to just to leave the base.
One mistake was understandable. A big bloated corporation like Manifest Industries was bound to have a few things fall through the cracks. But the combo of sending the wrong inmates to an uninhabitable world? It felt intentional. But then what was the end goal? Had they been sent here to die, or was it sabotage? There were too many unanswered questions.
"It was supposed to be safe." Max said thoughtfully, "Something stinks about this whole situation. High risk prisoners, an unknown planet, stuck here how long with no rescue? No communication even? I've never heard of a colony being started this way. And for us to just happen to be dropped off on a world thought to be a myth? No, something doesn't add up."
"Well, you can do the math later, Mr. Detective." Junip leaned in, brushing the leaves away from zir face and planting a kiss on Max's forehead with soft petal lips. "You are off duty till your ribs heal, you hear me?"
"You're the boss," he agreed, lifting zir hand to his lips and kissing it. Max lay back and relaxed after the effort.
"And don't you forget it,” Junip teased. “Get some sleep, sweetheart. Doctor's orders."
Max drifted off to sleep, and Junip brushed his cheek gently. The two colonists ze'd been training as assistants came while she wasn't looking and were staring at zir with concern.
"Is that part of the medical procedure?" The Kreelux nurse trainee asked nervously.
Junip laughed, "No, no. Don't worry, Max and I are together."
Junip put the nurses to work, studying and running simulations for different medical procedures. A few injured folk came in, mostly people unused to physical labor. Just a few scrapes, bruises, and one broken thumb from a hammering incident. Junip caught the Kreelux nurse trying to kiss the injured man's forehead uncertainly and had to shoo the silly girl away.
Ze looked over Gunmetal's report about the animals and plants they'd been documenting. Nothing that could be used to improve the colony without completely taking over the ecosystem. However, it might be possible to build other layers that would have different environments for people to make them more at home. Junip passed the idea on to Random, who danced that it was a good idea.
Junip couldn't shake the feeling that Max was right. Something did feel off about this. This had been Max's first colony expedition, but not zirs. Since graduating medical school, Junip has been the planetside doctor for three colonies. Some of them had failed, but this was the first one that was unsustainable from the beginning.
Ze hadn't thought it odd till it had been pointed out. Max only agreed to join zir on this mission because he'd gotten badly injured on his last assignment. Junip sent a chat invite to Mayor Slate to inform him of zir misgivings.
"What's up, Doc?" Slate asked when he responded.
"Max thinks something is suspicious about our current situation," ze responded. "And I think he's right. I think we were set up to fail. Or at least to take risks you don't normally see when setting up a colony."
"I admit, this wasn't what I was expecting when I signed up for this," admitted Slate.
Junip continued, "I don't know about you, but I was at least expecting to land on a planet with breathable air. Instead, we end up on a barren wasteland that just happens to be the lost homeworld of the Orgs? And not, for example, landing on one of the known habitable worlds scheduled for colonization?"
"I…" Slate paused at that, "Okay, when you put it that way it sounds obvious that something's wrong. When we first woke up here, I was too focused on making sure this place was survivable that I didn't think of why it wasn't. Maybe it's time to get the Administration Room fixed up. Looks like I have to do some research about our mission."
By the time Orion crossed the bridge onto the mining rig, his skateboard wounds were all healed. He stopped by the facility to check in and make sure it was still clear of ratillacs. The carnage from the fire traps was all cleaned up, and repairs on the catwalks were underway.
Orion introduced himself to the lead techanic working on the rig, a mottled Grey named Oslo. He warned the Oslo about the flairmingos and asked if they needed anything.
“We fixed a repair drone, and it’s taking care of the hazardous work.” Oslo added, “We’re mostly working on getting the system online. But we still have some robombie corpses wedged in weird places. We need them cleared away, especially if there’s still any active ones hiding.”
Orion offered to help with the robot bodies, and they shot him a mission request. He spent an hour harvesting the robombies and clearing those areas for work, getting some experience for his trouble. Satisfied the techs could continue repairs unmolested, Orion rode down the final unexplored bridge.
Halfway down the still rickety but functional bridge, Orion started to get worried. The Bolt Swamp was a big enough threat, but the foothills below the dip of the crater hill looked even more ominous. The swirling dust devils streaked with lightning bolts had not subsided the entire time Orion had been awake on this planet. He hoped the wind wasn't as strong as the sandstorm he got caught in. He didn't relish being dashed against a rock again.
He slowed his pace as he approached the edge of the dust storm. Orion equipped the goggles and face mask, turning on his implant’s flashlight to see in the darkening cloud swirling around him. After a streak of lightning cut through the sky and nearly deafened them with the immediate crack of thunder, he asked Gemini to use his
‘Apus, I need you to keep a lookout,’ Orion thought at his AI companion. ‘Make sure we're not getting flanked.’
Apus appeared in a flash. ‘On it, Chief!’ Apus took to the wing and flew into the storm.
‘Hmmm,’ he pondered. ‘Maybe Gunmetal's right about Apus developing a real personality.’
Dismounting and lowering Gemini to the ground, Orion brought out his new hunting rifle. It felt more natural in his hands, and he crouched into a sneaking posture. His warden vocation gave him bonuses on stealth when hunting. Orion and his partners blended into the sandy landscape to become nearly invisible to the naked eye.
With the wind whipping past them almost painfully, they started to approach a large shadow in the distance. At first, Orion thought they were coming up to another rock formation, but he was surprised to find out the truth.
Orion stood and stared when he reached it. It was the wrought iron spire of a skyscraper. It was in the same style as the underground city but far more ornate. The pointed tip of the building was capped with a lightning rod, which attracted a bolt of lighting every few minutes. He saw similar flashes of light in the distance, stopping before hitting the ground.
The dome must have collapsed around this area, but the buildings were sturdy enough to remain standing while the BioDome 'sky' fell around them. Orion briefly considered breaking into one of the buildings, wondering what kind of loot might be hidden inside these extravagant high rises. But he shuddered to think what kind of nasty robombies would lurk just beyond the walls.
Orion and his animal entourage continued to sneak through the field of spires. He quickly started to lose track of where he was. The low visibility and sameness of the rising pillars of decadent architecture became a confusing maze the deeper they went. Any tracks they left behind were scoured away by the howling gale.
Orion stepped between two buildings into something of a clearing. He was surrounded by a ring of spires poking up from the ground. They were the same height and ornately decorated like the roof of a cathedral. Lightning struck the iron topped points, dancing across the circular ring of skyscrapers like an angelic halo. The hot wind was partly blocked by the dark shingles, allowing for slightly better visibility.
Orion went cold despite the oppressive heat. A flat circular area inexplicably in the middle of a perpetual storm? If this were Seas of Spiritus, that could only mean one thing. He was standing in a boss arena! Orion was about to turn back when movement caught his eye.
Something pink was moving along the side of the nearest building. Not crawling up the wall like a lizard, but walking on the sheer wall like a mountain goat. It was emaciated, and like most of the animals he'd seen on the surface, it was partly robotic. The front legs and shoulders were mechanical, the back half covered in overgrown wool. Several back plates had tubes that held glowing purple liquid protruding from them. A metal, skull-like head was connected to the body with a segmented neck. The metallic sheep had petite crystalline horns and a gas mask canister on one side of its mouth. The presence of udders indicated that this was a this was a doe rather than a ram.
More pink sheep walked along the sides of the buildings to surround him. They did nothing at first, just staring at the small party below despite their stealthy approach. Maybe stepping into the arena automatically started an encounter. Whatever the reason, Orion stood and broke stealth. He lifted his rifle, holding it steady against the violent gusts that threatened to rip the weapon from his hands. He raised the weapon, finger hovering over the trigger in case of an attack.
Suddenly, all of the ewes started to bleat at once, a sound not unlike a parking lot full of cars whose alarms went off all at once. Orion's trigger finger went slack as Major started to growl in his low synthy voice. Orion looked up and saw an intimidating shadow swaying through the dust devils in front of him. A loud whistle like a steam train cut through the roar of the wind and parted the sand to reveal the largest ram he'd ever seen. It was the size of a bull, and looked twice as angry.
The entire front half of the ram was covered in cybernetics. Deep grooves of battle damage scoured into the metal. His wool was steel gray and bristled like a scrubbing pad. It was marred by a network of scars from countless battles. The metallic skull had gas mask canisters on both sides, issuing purple smoke. Thick glowing amethyst crystal horns curved up and around the skeletal head. Intense violet eyes bored into the Org with burning hatred. Hastily, Orion used
[Steelwool the Batteram Boss: LVL Unknown]
Steelwool looked like Death incarnate, violet eyes and horns focused on him. Orion acted quickly, whipping the rifle around and taking aim. He got the Ram's head in his scope and pulled the trigger without hesitation. The plasma blast ricocheted off the blunt skull like it was being deflected off a mirror. Steelwool lowered his head and pawed the ground, great gouts of steam hissing from his vents.
Suddenly, Apus wheeled down from the sky and landed on Orion's shoulder, "Be careful, Boss! There's some kind of sheep creatures hiding in the storm!"
Orion's words dripped with sarcasm, "You don't say?"