Connection Unknown: Chapter 4 Part 3 of 4 (Patreon)

Luke agreed. They were coming in like a damn bullet. The votes climbed in seconds.

“Fuck you, assholes.” The pilot laughed; he’d aimed them at the landing point and gunned at it.

“Fucking piece of shit!” a gunners yelled.

They were a few kilometers away from the node when they got the necessary fifteen votes. Turrets opened up on the dropship, coming in on a straight line.

[Ejecting]

The cargo bay opened like a firecracker going off inside a can, flinging everyone out.

“You fucking suck, HorneoThirty-Two!” a other grunts yelled at the pilot.

Luke used his jets, counteracting the spin as he made himself as large as possible.

“Fucking report bitch!”

Even being tossed free from the dropship and using their jets, they had time to leave their remarks.

A missile rose out of the node and hit the dropship, turning it into tumbling metal spraying across the ground that led to the node.

Machine gun fire targeting the falling bots.

Luke ignored them. Either they’d kill him or not.

“Damn, maybe the armor wasn’t a good idea.” Fin laughed.

Luke got flat; he fired jets across his whole torso at full blast to slow himself. He saw a bot hit a rock, shattering into spinning metal.

“Glide—try to turn falling into sliding,” Luke yelled.

He threw himself forward and tracers buzzed past him. His heart thumped as other bots hit the ground; a lucky one landed and rolled, then shifted to cover behind a rock outcropping.

Luke saw Fin and Jynx coming down near him.

“This is going to suck.” Luke grimaced. “Hello, gravity, you old bast-ard.” Luke’s voice rose as he hit the ground and bounced, spinning. “Fuck!”

“Shit. Tits. Ass. Motherfucker.” Jynx punctuated every time she hit the ground. “Motherfucking. Newb. Pilot. Shits.”

“I think I’m gonna throw up!” Fin screamed.

They came to a stop in the ice.

“Ow!” Luke flopped onto his back and looked at the sky. “Wonder what it looks like from outside the suit,” Luke muttered. He took a second to get the spinning under control and looked around. They were way off target, but behind a large rock outcropping. Tracers from the turrets filled the air around the rest of the bots that had dropped with them.

“Got a recording.” Jynx snorted. “It looks about as stupid as you think it would, like a damn human cartwheel smashing into rocks and crap.”

“Well, I like to make an entrance,” Fin said.

Luke gathered himself up, and they moved closer to the outcropping. He looked around the corner. The node was a good two hundred meters, with little cover bigger than calf-high rocks.

“Well, there’s good news and—” Luke saw the turret open fire as he tried to back up into cover. Rounds tore through his armor and as his vision blanked.

[You Died]

[Purchase new bot? 68718 Platnium/ 34 Credits]

“Fuck! Turret like third from the right, had my number.” Luke grimaced at the bot price.

“Dammit. Has friends—other side is covered too,” Jynx said.

“I’m gonna see if we can get anyone to cover us.”

Luke jumped into his new bot and ran to the armory, pulling up his terminal and reporting the pilot. The trust rating of the guy had dropped from the fifty percent that everyone got when joining a game, to negative thirty percent.

“You got smokes with your grenades?” Luke asked, punching in rifle to the armory terminal.

“Yeah, I do. Good idea.”

Luke added a grenade package—another forty credits, including his bot.

He ran to the armory door. “Come on, come on, come on.” He stood in front of the port.

“Smoke is out. Give it some time to spread,” Fin said.

“That wind is spreading it all over the place,” Jynx said.

“We’ll have to cut to the right and get into the smoke cover more. Head up to the rocks and hide behind those. Wait for the turrets to get bored and then we can keep pushing.”

“That’s going to take forever!” Jynx complained.

“We got the time, just need to sneak.”

Luke’s crate arrived. He grabbed and secured his gun, belt, and grenades and left the room to run for the hangar.

Luke pulled up his map of the system, focusing on Valhalla and the area Jynx and Fin were located. “You’ve got some friendlies on your left,” Luke said. Pancakes and Gum Drops node. Who names these things?

“Looking for a ride to Pancakes and Gum Drops node. Anyone heading that way?” Luke yelled.

“Better just waiting for them to die or going to a new drop,” someone said, running past him.

Luke kept refreshing the forum to check for dropship pilots posting about heading to the node.

He got a ping from the forum from someone headed that way.

“Hangar Eight.”

Luke was in hangar one hundred and three.

He took off at a run into SW.

It took him nearly ten minutes to reach the hangar.

“Shit, one on the left hit me. I’m wounded—armor saved me though,” Jynx said.

Luke made it to the hangar and pinged the person who had responded on the forum.

>Already headed down, full ship.

“Dammit.” Luke hit his leg.

“What is it?” Fin asked.

“All the dropships are getting filled up as soon as they land. They’re going wherever they want to. I’m just messaging a ship that left, see if he can pick me up when he gets back here.”

“Okay. Jynx, I’m moving up to you.”

Luke listened to them moving up toward the base as he stood there, waiting.

He got a ping from the forum as he waited.

>Coming back up to Hangar 8

“Shouldn’t be long till I’m down,” Luke said.

“We could use the help,” Fin said.

“Shit! Missiles!” Jynx yelled.

Luke waited in tense silence.

“They got me. All right, heading to you, Luke. Hangar eight, right?”

“Yeah, be quick about it, or we’ll miss our ride.”

“Spawning in now, gotta grab my gear quick.”

The dropship arrived minutes later. He ran over to it as it turned and landed, facing back toward Valhalla.

Luke ran up the ramp as Jynx made it into the ship, a last to get a spot.

“Closing ramp.”

“Shit, they got me—machine gun. Didn’t have anything better to do. I’m spawning.”

“Damn, we just got on a shuttle,” Luke said.

“Hangar eight, right? I can do that.”

The dropship flew out of SW and turned toward Valhalla. The pilot rarely spoke; the gunners opened up on the node as soon as it came into view, raking the turrets and walls. The dropship fired off missiles to give them something to worry about and came down into a ravine with a sheer cliff of ice to the left, and a gentle slope to the right leading to the base.

“Ramp!” the pilot yelled as it opened. A dropship ahead of them took off and headed back toward SW as their dropship trawled forward.

Jynx was off with the first bots, Luke following seconds afterward.

He sloshed through icy mush that was already freezing, getting to the rise as the dropship’s engines howled, shooting down the ravine and then back into space.

They ran with the others, up the slope to the fighting: tracers ripped back and forth, missiles striking ice, stone, bots, walls, and turrets.

Luke and Jynx weaved across the open ground, dropping down into trenches that had been carved into the ice, broken up by craters from missiles. They followed the flow of bots up to the front.

Jynx threw her machine gun up on the trench and started combing the enemy wall with fire.

Most of the turrets were down, and there were rents in the outer wall.

“Try to hit them through the wall if you can, there and there.” Luke pinged open areas as he switched his optic’s zoom, aiming at the enemy on the wall. He watched for heads and movement. He saw one hiding next to a burnt-out turret.

Luke steadied and fired. The bot dropped out of sight.

Smoke was thrown out, drifting across Luke’s view. Valhalla’s wind dragged it across their front.

“Smoke! Get it out, create a path!” the commander yelled.

Luke checked his smoke grenades.

“Get ready to move. We’ll push up to those rocks and I’ll get more smoke up, use it to advance,” Luke said and pinged.

“Got it,” Jynx said, firing through the openings in the base until the smoke covered her and then fired blindly in hopes it would keep them down.

“Go!” Luke yelled on local and vaulted over the trench and ran for the rocks. He clamped his rifle and pulled out a smoke grenade, tossing it forward and to the side so the smoke would spread over their advance.

Other squads advanced in the rush.

“I can’t see shit,” Jynx said.

“Well then, we know it’s working.” Luke counted five seconds. “Let’s push!”

He grabbed another smoke, prepped it, letting it start to exhaust. He stopped close to what he estimated was the edge of his last smoke and threw. “Wait for the smoke to fill, five seconds!” Luke yelled on local.

“Good thing I’ve been working on my cardio.” Jynx grunted.

“Hey, at least we don’t feel the weight of all our guns and crap.” Then, on local: “Move!”

They ran out. Luke found a crater he’d seen from the trench, using it as a reference point forward. Jynx was right behind him.

He came out fifty meters from the enemy walls. He grabbed a grenade and threw it as he and jumped for cover. Guns opened up around him.

Jynx and the other attackers fired from the smoke. Luke took out his last smoke and threw it in the direction of the closest breach when he heard his grenade go off.

“Go! Come on—move it!” another squad leader yelled, bringing his people past.

Luke followed them. The smoke in the wall was just starting to spread. He stepped over an attacker who’d bought it.

“Jynx, move up!”

“I just got a ride heading down,” Fin said.

“Got it,” Luke said, aiming as he moved into the breach. Bots poured in, firing and spreading out. He could hear the other turrets firing on the other advances, the deep, bassy thumps of anti-air and missiles.

The air was alive with destruction.

He advanced with other attackers between containers. Luke ran to the end and glanced left. A turret opened up on him from behind.

“Shit! Turret or machine gunner to the right!”

[You Died]

“I’m spawning back in.”

“Got it. Ah, shit! The containers were a funnel! They’re shooting through it!”

With each spawn, Luke used eighty thousand platinum for a new bot and all his gear, then he’d have to track down a ship going to the same area and push up to the base as the defenders respawned inside, recycling their bots and the attackers’ bots into ingots. Sometimes Jynx and Fin would be there; other times they had just died, were dropping down or waiting for a dropship.

“Someone really needs to figure out the damn command and control. We don’t have enough dropships!” Luke said. It was a few times that they’d died relatively close together and were on SW at the same time.

“Want to call it?” Fin asked.

Luke wanted to argue, but he’d died six times since the dropship idiot. Even if he didn’t want to do the math, his brain came up with the number. Two hundred and ninety-four credits—that’s how much he’d spent in the last hour with all kitted out bots.

Luke looked at the map around the Pancake node. The fighting was still ongoing, and in a vicious stalemate.

“I think we should. Need to get some sleep,” Jynx said.

“Wish we could spawn on the planet, then we wouldn’t be stuck waiting on dropships so much.” Luke sighed. “But yeah, I agree.”

“Want to check out the crafting side tomorrow?” Fin asked.

“Won’t be on tomorrow but I’ll be on the day after.” Luke tried to stifle a yawn.

“I’m in. If we can make our own bots and guns, that would be kind of cool, and we haven’t even checked out the dropships or shuttles,” Jynx said.

“There’s a whole system to explore, I gotta go before I’m late again. See you later!” Fin waved and exited the net. His bot slumped, empty, and moved to the nearest rack.

“See you later.” Luke said.

Jynx and he logged off.