"I’ve yet to see much of a main plotline outside 'get stronger lan'," Silent said. "The whole steal a spaceship sub-plot seems fatally flawed by navigation issues."
"Maybe it kicks off once we’re out of the starter system," I said. "I think this is all still the newbie zone."
"And the true plot is to prove oneself, is it not?" Arlen said, with a laugh that held a hopeful note. "We only wait to be invited."
I glanced at Nina, who had to be the obvious choice for any Starfighter Invitation, but she was focused on the latest ramp.
"Less light on the next level," she said. "How are the other teams progressing?"
"Four airlocks open now," Silent reported. "And two additional elevators on the move—one much better oiled than ours. The teams who reached the bottom of the crater travelled down a narrower shaft than ours, and have found an internal airlock that’s brought them out at roughly the same level as us. There’s no-one immediately nearby, but we’re not comfortably out ahead anymore."
"Any teams working together?"
"Some. The fight around the first airlock turned ugly, but other groups are cooperating."
We were debating whether to risk turning on our suit lights in the darker lower reaches when Silent abruptly stopped speaking, then said: "Watch this feed."
The serried ranks of hydroponic racks revealed the location. What was happening was far from clear thanks to the massed globules of floating liquid, but the sounds the players were making told their own stories. Shouts, shrieks, sudden silence.
"Did anyone see it clearly?" Nina asked.
"I think there was more than one," I said, hesitantly.
"It is as if the water itself was attacking them," Arlen said.
"No, there was something with a little more shape," Silent said. "But it moved very fluidly—like an octopus with fewer tentacles."
"What were they doing before that happened?" I asked.
"Fooling about," Silent said, after a pause for consultation with Amelia. "Playing with the floating liquid. There was a long lead-up to the attack, where one of the group was convinced something was moving among the racks, circling them. They didn’t believe her."
"Sound might have been the draw, but lights are still too big a risk," Nina said, turning her attention back to the darkened ramp ahead.
"Agreed," Silent said, with the hint of a sigh. "But before we go down, swap out air supplies. It’s a little early, I know, but we don’t want to be messing about in that gloom."
"Dio," I said over our private link, as we all turned to obey. "Does this Challenge have any pain muting?"
[[None to speak of.]]
"If—if one of those things gets me, so that I can’t fight it off, is there anything I can do to make it less…less awful?"
[[You are always able to Evacuate. It’s in the command list.]] No judgment in Dio’s tone, just practicality.
"Okay." I checked, and there was indeed an [Evacuate] command. I’d seen it before, but assumed that meant the Renba would scurry off to a safe distance. "That does what exactly?"
[[You abandon your current modal unit and are transferred to the Renba. You would not be able to rejoin the Challenge after that, of course.]]
My body was a ship I could leap out of at any time. I almost laughed at the image, or out of relief, but caught myself and choked it off into a strangled puff of air.
"Thanks, Dio," I said instead. "That’s good to know."
[[Our purpose is not to traumatise Bios,"]] Dio said.
"Just pull our strings, and watch us die?"
[[Exactly that,]] Dio said.
Te sounded sad. I wondered how many Bios Ydionessel had lost. Valued transport? Beloved pets?
Friends?
47
player vs environment
"Do you think they could have been Type Fours?" I asked. "Been, um, Ah Ma Ani?"
"That’s the extra-tall species?" Silent paused, a vague outline in the dark. "Ceiling’s are high enough. I didn’t notice how many fingers the Ah Ma Ani had."
That seemed a non sequitur until I remembered the glove he’d found.
"They looked so gentle and slow-moving," I said, remembering those I’d seen on Mars. "Hard to imagine them fighting anyone."
"Unless the Cycogs start filling in detail, we don’t know what really happened to our system," Nina said. "It would advantage them to present The Synergis as a peacemaking force among warring Bios."
"Perhaps it is an ark, and the tall ones come to us for help," Arlen suggested.
"Or it’s all made up," I said, with a faint sigh. Deciding how I felt about The Synergis wasn’t made any easier by the Cycogs' games with truth.
"Ready to move on?" Silent asked.
A touch reluctantly, I collected my sled. The last four levels had been near-lightless, and we’d had to navigate by touch, blocks of shadow, and the fact that the layout of each floor seemed to repeat. The crossing had been uneventful, but achingly tense, and we’d celebrated a return to dim light by pausing in a bare side room, pulling the sliding door closed and just breathing for a while.
"This floor doesn’t look residential," Nina said, as we resumed our slow-and-silent progress down endless hallways.
"Fewer doors," Silent agreed. "Wider corridors, as well. Ceremonial? Administrative?" He paused to peer through the nearest open doorway. "Tidier, too. Less floating chaff."
"There is a window," Imoenne noted, and we turned to the half-open door she floated before.
Inside, a portion of floor glowed faintly. I’d assumed it was a lighted platform, but as I craned to see past the others, something flickered beyond. We pried the door open, and peered down into a vast echoing space. A distant central sphere looked deceptively small, but was likely larger than the ship that brought us to The Wreck. Between it and us were two sets of rings of some dark purplish substance, oscillating lazily. When the rings came near each other, there were flickers, some sort of electrical arcing.
"The engine room?" Nina said. "Possibly the control room is beyond."
"No bridges," I said. The rings might be moving slowly, but it didn’t look at all safe to fly through them.
Silent pressed as close to the window as his helmet would allow, craning to see more of the area immediately around us. "I can see several probable access points. Judging from their spacing, we want to look for a right turn off our current corridor."
Rather than move off immediately, we lingered at the window searching for details. The slow revolution of the rings didn’t change, but the arcing wasn’t conveniently conforming to a pattern we could avoid.