Did I even want that?
44
friendly competition
[[[[Welcome to the System Challenge.]]]]
"Thanks, dude."
"Poggers!"
"This is gonna be so sick!"
Our carefully laid plans had not factored in two other groups also hanging back until the main rush had departed. Ten people crowded ahead of us, blotting out the spectacular view of The Wreck, and I couldn’t decide whether the more excitable of our immediate set of rivals were as young and brash as they seemed.
[[[[Do you wish for further explanation before commencing the Challenge?]]]]
"Nah, man, we’re good," said the tallest of the loud team’s players. "Heard it all already."
[[[[Then your sleds are available in Bay Three. Remember to set the follow distance for your Renba.]]]]
A timely reminder that the stakes in this game involved more than just losing a Challenge in a very public manner. That all this, the virtual stars, could be taken away.
"Wish me luck, Dio."
[[Good luck.]] Dio’s voice held a faint note of sympathy, as if te could readily guess my thoughts. Te probably could.
Before Bay Three came a line of doors opening into a massive vat of Soup. Having an EVA suit pattern was a prerequisite for the System Challenge, and I was glad not to have to put mine on manually, since along with little stores of water and nutrient broth, the thing came with a catheter. There were times I wished the main quest line skipped all this realism.
Like the majority of the other groups, we’d obeyed some heavy-handed hints from our Cycogs and chosen matching cosmetic overlays to make it easier to identify us as a team. We’d briefly flirted with homages to Star Trek, or perhaps an N7 uniform—and I’d privately thought of my Core Unit logo—but had ended up in dark blue with clusters of white stars down one side, from helmet to boots.
"We look like a bobsled team," Silent said, over our party voice channel.
"We are magnifique," Arlen said, leading our way into Bay Three—a low-roofed airlock with twenty sleds lined up all along one wall, all facing a currently closed hatch. "But what do these others mean for our arrangements?" he added, with a bob of his helmet toward a tangle of people suited up in black and red geometrics, or white with the outline of blue angel wings on the back.
"Go slow, adjust as necessary," Nina said. "And hope we get down before anyone—"
All ten opposing party members stopped selecting sleds and pivoted to stare at us.
"Too late," I said.
"One of you is really Nina Stella?" asked one of the excitable group in red and black. "I don’t know whether to sledge or ask for an autograph."
That made Silent laugh. "Just get to the Core before we do, man," he said, even though we’d planned on holding our tongues. "Good luck all."
"But which one is she?" the guy—ExtinctionPlus—said.
He’d spoken more to his team than us, so it wasn’t too awkward to ignore the question and go to select our sleds—which were nothing more than a rack of spare air packs attached to an impeller, with handlebar controls, and adjustable footrests. The footrests didn’t make much sense to me until I realised that riders could brace against them, and prevent the end of the sled from flailing free.
The second team watched without comment as we examined our rides. Keeping communication on a private link was the same strategy we’d chosen to adopt, but it felt eerie and hostile thanks to the reflective helmets. I was glad Silent had wished everyone good luck—and then had to turn my attention to a flood of guild messages, since it had been news to them too.
The sled bays were airlocks, and once we were all ready the whole place decompressed. Arlen began to hum the Star Wars theme as the outer hatch split horizontally, and slowly opened out into a vista of sparkling lights, and the endless curve of The Wreck. We’d seen it in detail during the explorations of the earlier teams, but it still deserved a pause for awe at the sheer size of the thing. A ten kilometre diameter. The tallest building in the world wasn’t even a full kilometre.
"Let’s aim dead centre until we see what these others do," Nina suggested.
"We can go quickly, and then stop short—it will make them want to rush, and then they will pass us!" Arlen said, sounding like he was enjoying our complications immensely.
We did that.
Would floating through space ever get old? Would I one day drift in a star-studded abyss, indifferent? If so, it would have to be far in the future, for despite getting in as much practice as I could manage, it was impossible to not keep gaping in every direction. Outside of atmosphere, the Great Rift was so clear and distinct. Clouds in space. And because that was part of our own galaxy, it had become something I could actually visit. What would it look like from the inside?
But soon The Wreck consumed all attention. In the ten minutes of rapid travel between the transport and the damaged space station—it surely couldn’t be a ship—I kept finding new details that I hadn’t noticed in previous surveys. You could easily fit all the skyscrapers of Manhattan into the gaping rent in its flank, and the number of possible entry points seemed countless. If we couldn’t find an external airlock, where would we even start in searching for an internal one?
The initial rush of teams from this third wave of Challengers had descended as cautiously as possible down the impact crater. Inevitably, someone grew impatient, collided with a floating piece of debris, and sent it hurtling toward another team, who shielded themselves and continued the chain reaction. Most of the teams had been hugging the edges of the crater, and retreated hastily into the nearest side-passage, so the casualty count was relatively low. But still injuries, and at least one death. It was disconcerting to meet a Renba travelling in the opposite direction.
The debris field began well above the actual crater, so we would have had to slow anyway, but coming to a full stop worked just as Arlen had hoped, with both our immediate rival teams scudding past us. They were travelling at slight angles that made it clear where they intended to enter the crater.
"Let them get past the lip, and then we’ll head down," Nina said.
"Some return already," Imoenne noted.
A full team, one player apparently unconscious, and two more without their sleds, were helping each other slowly back. If these made it to the transport or staging satellite, they could recover and try again.
After they had passed, we descended to the section of The Wreck’s hull overhanging the exposed transport tube, only to face the complexities of keeping hold of our sleds while trying to walk with magnetic boots. Fortunately each segment of the outer hull was easily large enough for all five of us to float above without coming close to knocking into each other, and so we managed to reorient ourselves without ignominious disaster. Then we surveyed the seemingly featureless curve of identical segments stretching away from the lip of the impact crater.
"Here’s the small row of holes noted by the previous teams," Silent said, settling himself at one edge of our first segment. "They tried lan insertion, much as we unlocked the final stage of the gauntlet series, so we won’t bother trying that unless we spot some difference. If you find anything, try not to point to it or reach to pull the handle or whatever. We don’t want to open this one, just locate a distinct feature that the other segments don’t have and move on. I’ve highlighted segments as targets here, and then at the true location."