Chapter 5

Traveling to the last known location of the clones, I checked through my inventory. I didn't have a separate cache or a strong hold, not yet anyway, so everything I owned in the OASIS was on my person. Being a ranger, I could equip a two-handed ranged weapon and have a side arm readied. Having warrior perks, the simulations let me have a one-handed melee weapon equipped. Unfortunately, my side arm was the only gun I owned, it happened to be a rare drop with really good stats, the damage was insane for a small gun, but the fire rate was junk, but I didn't expect a high tech revolver to fire automatically. My two-handed ranged weapon was just a pre-level 99 bow I couldn't find a suitable replacement for. I hoped that all the grinding I did and all the credits I blew to reach the level cap I would have replaced it by now, but I never made it around to a questline that offered any alternative. Everything else I had equipped had stat and set bonuses favoring my ranger side, more specifically guns, even more specifically, handguns. All of my armor I had maxed out upgrades and alterations to enhance it past the stats they offered, which were still really high and requiring level 99. I didn't have any artifacts equipped, I hadn't found any. My inventory was relatively empty, I liked to keep it really organized and I always sold what I couldn't use, so that made it easier. I thought now, that maybe I should have kept something better than that bow.

I decided to make a pit stop while enroute to purchase an upgrade. I was traveling about a half a sector out of my way, but it could mean life or death for me. I banked around and elongated space station built into an asteroid, it might have been from some movie or game, but I didn't recognize it. One of the resources Zo gave me said this place is where one of the best arms dealers in the OASIS resides and an arms dealer is what I needed. After I landed on the outer hangar bay, I made my way inside, I knew the guy I wanted to see set up shop at the core. It felt like walking through a mine, all the walls were made up of the raw asteroid, supported by metal and wood beams. It took about five minutes of winding tunnels to finally get to the center of this place. I found a metal blast door there, it was locked so I banged on it. The intercom off to the right let out a shriek and then a voice followed, "Password!" I thought for a moment, I really should have looked that back up on my way here. "You have 10 seconds to comply. 10."

"It's Passamamassy"

"9."

"Quadamapassy?"

"8."

"Passamashloddy."

"No!" The piercing voice on the intercom replied. "It's Passamaquoddy!"

"Of course, that's what I meant to say." I replied, sweat from my brow made it down into my visor. The door opened slowly. The simulated grinding mechanical sound felt soothing compared to that voice from the intercom. After a short time I made it into the armored and password protected den. I didn't see anyone physically around or manning the shop. I approached the counter and an automatic menu pulled up and projected information right in front of my face. Underneath that I could see a solid glass lid with a weapon displayed, I noticed all the weapons lined up, end to end on a conveyor belt. I scrolled through the visual interface and the belt tracked it back and forth with a delay. I didn't see any formal search options and I saw gaps in the inventory. Prices were through the roof on all the good stuff, this guy found and was selling a Weirding Module, too cool. I searched for an hour, way longer than I wanted to spend in this place, but I had to look through about 200 different weapons with no refinement. I had to choose between the M56 Smartgun from Aliens or the Morita II Assault Rifle. I knew I wanted to be able to pump out as many rounds as I could in their general direction before they could react. The Smartgun had high accuracy and fire rate, excellent range for the type of weapon it was, but the damage left something to be desired. On the other hand the Morita Tonshi, it was also called, had okay ranged and average fire rate, I would have to get closer and wouldn't put as many holes in them as I would like. It had a game changer attachment, though. I could fire a grenade or two before they could react, which could just be the end of the job right there. I thought about it a little longer and ended up taking the M56. None of my gear enhancements worked on explosives, I would do more damage a second with a faster firing gun. I made my purchase and shortly afterwards the conveyor belt brought around my new Smartgun and dropped it into a tray like I won it out of a claw machine. I wish, this thing was maxing on my budget.

I got back in my ship after completing a tunnel maze and took off. I could only hope the clones didn't get too far from where they were last spotted. I don't think they, he, it, would even actually log out, so I wasn't worried about needing to find them again. A few minutes later I came into orbit of a chaos world, Be'er Shacat. Both magic and technology could be used here, and there was no clear theme that I could see in all the worlds being collided, except for one crazy hellish nightmare. A small area of the surface was a glowing green sea of nuclear waste that spread throughout the entire surface via the cracks and fissures of the desolate and blackened terrain. Razor sharp rocky peaks wrapped around the surface like a serpent. As I read the description it became more and more terrifying, this place was fucked. Mechanized soldiers, cyborgs, zombies, demonic beasts, dragons, orcs, giant fleshy abominations stitched together, necromancers and wizards, all roaming freely and in dense patterns between crashed alien ships and space marine freighters. There were also a number of gigantic castles and cave lairs full of epic classed bosses peppered into the already impossible mix.

I put my ship closer to the surface and started scanning for players. After one full rotation I saw a dense blip on the other side of a black spire jutting from the ground. I touched down in the flattest area I could find and drew my new heavy weapon. I hiked up to the edge of the cliff that joined with the spire and used a standalone scope to survey what lied ahead of me. I would have been surprised at how lacking the population of monsters had been compared to the description, but I soon noticed the swath of destruction cut into the crackled open area in front of me. Like a yellow brick road, the bodies of soldiers and demons lay shoulder to shoulder winding from one end of the ravine to the dip in the mountains opposite of my location. If these guys, or this one guy, is treating this place like a proverbial cake walk, I was fucked.

I followed the trail of corpses up to the other cliff. When I looked over I saw a tiny white chapel. The ground around it glowed yellow and all the monsters that stepped on to it caught fire and exploded with light. This must be the questing hub for this area. I didn't see any NPCs outside to confirm that, and I wasn't going to just walk through the front door and check inside. I waited for a few minutes for the clones to emerge from inside their sanctuary, when they did, I examined them as much as I could before following. All eight of them traveled in a tight formation, two warriors in front, two mages and a cleric near the center, and three rangers rounding the rear. I now had a clear target for my ambush, the sooner the healer was dead, the easier the rest of this would be. Easy as seven against one could be. I saw them edge out of sight into a ravine, if I took the high ground and ran parallel to them, I could stay out of sight and take all the time I needed to prepare and choose when to strike. I came to the beginning of the slope to get on top of the ravine, I hoped I wouldn't run into a ton of mobs, they might be able to hear my guns going off if I got too close and it would give my position away. Just as that thought ran through my head two giant abominations respawned at the top near the end of the cliffs.

Grey stretched flesh of multiple other bodies were stitched together with large staples piecing them haphazardly into a disgusting and terrifying murder machine. Four tree trunk like legs with six arms, each holding variant sized blades, adhered with a mass of torsos, then two enormous masses of heads with eyes looking in every direction sat on top. I couldn't avoid them, and I really didn't want to fight both of them at once, but it seemed like I didn't have a choice when one of them spotted me and began to stampeded in my direction. I opened fire with my new M56, I remembered to equip my Venom Sack mod so my rounds did poison damage over time, stacking up to 20 when successive shots connected. I also remembered to activate my Deadly Aim buff, so the spread on my weapons equalled zero. The first giant chunked down to half health with the first burst. Numbers and text flashed across my screen, I didn't realize the M56 was an artifact, to my surprise it randomly generated two special effects and added them to the item description. I guess it had never been used before, so the the extra goodies were hidden. I managed to pull up my inventory to read what had changed while spreading my shots between the two lumbering abominations. The first item added: Deals double damage to non-player, non-humans. That one was pretty good, but the next one effectively made my purchase a bargain. The second item added: Each consecutive hit increases the damage to that target by 0.5% with no limit. That means the longer I pour rounds into something, the harder it gets hit. I stopped changing targets and concentrated on the closest monster and swept across the largest mass. My rounds tore through it like an invisible chainsaw, ripping and shredding the dead flesh, sending particles and blood flying sporadically. The first giant dropped a few feet away from me and I took a few steps back and aimed at the amalgamation of skulls on the shoulders of the other abomination. I melted that one faster than the last and split it down the middle. I felt like I had lost a ton of time so I almost forgot to loot the two beasts. They both dropped the same thing, one Bile Bomb each. These could be tremendously useful, when detonated, they release a foul smelling gunk that attracts a zombie horde. With my targets being at the mercy of the natural boundaries of the ravine, this could shake things up for them quite a bit.

I continued my pursuit, only needing to use my sidearm to drop a few straggling zombies and two of the infected soldiers, until I came to a slight gap on my higherground. I surveyed the bottom and saw that I was a head of my targets. I was starting to feel better about my odds until I got a message from Zo. It was a short instant message

Zo: Clean up crew on their way. Guild is upset you put their leader down like a dog.

I tried to send a message back, but he already appeared offline. I had to act fast, but I thought it might be too late already. The last thing I needed to do was start this fight and get jumped from behind. The odds were already stacked against me, severely. I assumed my targets were taking the ravine to it's end, so I made it further down and started making preparations when I get another message from Zo.

Zo: 3 incoming, been following for a while. Don't know any of them, dispose as desired.

Thanks, Zo, I thought to myself, because he was already offline. I continued to make assumptions, I guessed that they would touch down at the chapel, where it would've been the safest to do, if I would've thought of that. I decided to only one use one Bile Bomb, and save the second for my next encounter instead of pinching the group in the ravine between two hordes. I pulled the safety label off of the device, which was just a pressurized glass jar full of nasty looking green stuff. I wasn't sure if it would just break if I threw it, so I opened it, one of the first regrets. When it made it to the rocky ground below it exploded dramatically in a cloud of green gas. I instantly regretted that, also. The horde of zombies began spawning on the other cliff above the ravine and began running in like lemmings. They didn't take fall damage and die instantly, that wasn't the regret. My regrets involved the number of zombies associated with the labeling of horde. This wasn't a zombie horde from the movies, those were a mini-van's capacity in comparison with the football stadium mass of enemies pouring into the ravine. I thought it was going to overflow and I would be forced to fight my own mistake. Instead, the scores of zombies began to rush down the canyon like a flood. I traced them back to where they clashed with my marks, and they were using area of effect spells to mow them down as fast as they came. Now was my chance.

I lined up my first shot, with the cleric, who looked bored. I guess they didn't need much healing, I'm sorry I didn't present them with a challenging enough of an obstacle. My M56's barrelling sound cut through all the chaos. The world was silent compared to the deafening mechanical bellow of my rounds ripping into the softest, most vulnerable avatar. None of them looked at their fallen party member, instead they all looked directly at me. They burned through the horde even faster, scrambling and changing formation. I lined up another shot at the closest mage and held the trigger down until nothing was left. My visor flashed red, I had been grazed, I ducked out of habit and watched a fireball fly past me. This was going to be easier than I made it out to seem, from my observations it appeared that they could not split focus between multiple targets and multiple avatars. It was all or nothing. I put my Smart Gun to the edge and angled it over, I started firing in a sweeping and circular motion, like someone providing covering fire would. I saw magic missile whiz past me this time. I continued this until I noticed a craft hover a short distance away on my side of the canyon. This must be them, so I changed targets.

The craft strafed perpendicular to the divide looking in it, instead of around it. I had plenty of time to resituate and begin chipping away at the crafts hit points exponentially. I missed a few shots when I first started and reset the damage multiplier, but I got it ramped up to 250%. I didn't get to assault them for too much longer before they fired back. I was counting on them not having missiles, which they did have. Mid machine gun burst, I had to dive and avoid an explosive projectile. The clones in the ravine had almost burned through the entire horde, when I came tumbling down a shallow curved dip of natural rubble. I heard bullets and offensive spells collide with my surroundings on my way down, I managed to skid to my feet and take off down the flatter grade of the slope. I took a chance and ran into the remaining zombies, still sprinting at the clones.

They didn't attack me. The zombies ignored me as I ran and dipped between them. Their bodies shielded my own from the fire coming from above and behind. I thought I was safe inside the zombie swarm, until one closelined me. I fell back and hit the ground. Zombies continued to pass me, some stepped on me, others just kicked me. They were still take the shots for me, I seriously considered breaking the second Bile Bomb where I lie. I rolled over and looked at my pursuers, the group of six clones was gaining fast and the three from the clean up crew dropped directly into the fray behind them. I drew my side arm, still prone, and tried to line up a shot to the back line. My first two shots knocked zombies out of the way and the third round flew past a warrior, a mage, between two rangers and caught the front line of the clean up crew in the face. Back down to eight. I rolled sideways and jumped up to my feet and ran deeper into the horde. I reached a clearing and a fork, I didn't have anymore zombies for cover and picking a path seemed futile. Neither direction looked like it had a shortcut back to the top, and both had aggressive patrols of monsters looking equal in power. The left contained some more abominations traveling in threes, and the right had one giant mechanized hellspawn. I went right.

A significantly sized devil with bright red skin and swirly menacing horns, strapped with a chaingun arm and a fiery spell casting hand, lumbered around on two enormous metal actuated legs. Sections of the demon were armored and a portion of his head looked cybernetic, including something that looked like a borg eyepiece, with a completely metal and toothy jaw. I placed an item on the left wall of the path I took where I would be able to see it from much further down the ravine. The cyborg demon locked it's eyes on me as I approached and began to rev up the spinning barrels on it's enormous prosthetic gun arm. I booked past it and kept to the same inside of the wall I started from. Debris and rubble exploded behind me, the demons rounds tore into the wall, trailing behind me. It turned, moving heavy-footed and precisely, the gun fire from it stopped and new combat sounds rendered at my back. A fireball exploded in front of me, knocking me back and chipping away at my hit points. I could be in worse shape, but my health bar neared the halfway mark. Recovering from the shock, I stood back up and continued running.

The hail of fire aimed at me ceased in pockets, while I continued to retreat, I decided to turn around and assess my new surroundings. My pursuers didn't seem to be bothered by the notion that they were attacking the same target, albeit for different reasons. They looked downright chummy to me, throwing spells and firing bullets in tandem. Our demon friend still stalked from behind them, the clones and clean up crew paid no attention to it once they passed it, but it didn't look like it was giving up. I drew my sidearm with my quick draw and popped a quick burst at the item I placed earlier. Fingers crossed that shooting a Bile Bomb detonates it. I missed, however, the eight behind me scattered. One of the clean up crew jumped behind a nearby rock, the other ducked to the ground, while the clones reorganized formation into a line, queueing behind each other against the near wall. I fired again, using a scatter shot spell, changing my standard 10mm round into a tightly formed buckshot with an expanding spread. I hit the glass jar, it didn't break but it rolled from the high position and fell to the jagged, rocky surface. I held my breath, watching it tumble, everyone else was watching the same thing. I fired one more time, with a standard round, and watched the jar explode mid air, coating the demon in bile. I didn't wait around and continued running.

A thunderous stampeding sound came from the direction I happened to be running towards. Panicking, I searched for a way to climb up, putting my hands in every small ledge sticking out of the wall when I came under fire again. The path curved enough further up that I would be safe from bullets and spells there, but I came closer to the horde of zombies, coming in at full speed. Nothing was around the bend, so I started climbing again, I got a foot up and another hand further up. The wall wasn't completely vertical, it tilted out from the bottom, but it was steep enough to prevent me from just scampering up it. A few hand holds later and I was getting shot at again. I only needed to climb one more foot, to make it out. Then a body fell into canyon right over and past me, then another, then two at a time. A zombie horde began to pour over the edge, catching bullets and magic missiles for me as the fell. I looked over my shoulder to see the zombies pooling under me, and to see the clean up crew killing them before they hit the ground from behind a rocky slab. The clones stood out in the open pelting spells and bullets at me, assisting in the massive zombie massacre. I huddled against the wall, trying to think of a way out of this situation, but the answer just came to me when the corpses piled high enough to meet my feet and the fresh zombies just plopped down on to the top of the pile or rolled down to the bottom. Jumping backwards, I landed on top of the pile, dodging an new incoming body and an arcane bolt, then I jumped to grab the edge of the cliff and pulled myself up. My screen flashed red, I looked around fast, zombies ran right past me, or right into me, tripping and flipping over the edge. I had a leg up and tried standing, but my avatar fell to one knee. My left side was beaten near death, I couldn't use any two handed weapons anymore, and I wasn't going to be running anywhere. I slunk to the ground and rolled to my back, my health bar was flashing, I wasn't bleeding out, but I had a sliver of hit points left. I opened my inventory and blew through my health restoration items, except for one. I only got back to half health, and my arm and leg were still badly injured. I didn't have any stimpak items that would remove injuries and debuffs, they were really expensive, but I put them on my shopping list while I was just laying there.

Staring at the sky, a thought came to me. Looking into the cyclone of black smoke, ashes and eerily bright green lightning, I was motivated to stand. The gorge seemed silent, I still drew my sidearm and approached cautiously. I approached, dragging my left leg behind me, when an arm quickly grasped the edge of the cliff I came over. He appeared to be one of the two remaining clean up crew. "Stop!" I yelled, catching him off guard. He hadn't seen me yet, but his weapon was readied. He fumbled to use both hands on his BR55, so I alleviated his pressure. I relaxed my hand on the Quick Draw and fanned three quick shots. The first two would have been enough, one in the center of the chest and one through the side of his head, but the last shot I intended to use to bounce his weapon closer to me. Instead the battle rifle flew clear across and on to the other side of the ravine. Seven remained, this seemed more possible if they kept coming at me one by one.

I pulled out the Smart Gun, holstering my sidearm, and limped to the edge of the cliff. I started firing before I had a visual on my targets. My rounds just dug into the rock, no one remained at the bottom, and I realized out inaccurate this weapon became with an injured arm. If I couldn't hit the same target consistently, then it was useless to me. I continued to scan the ravine, looking back down where we had come from. The last person from the clean up crew, from what I could see, tried to get back into his aircraft. The clones wouldn't let him, I pulled out my binoculars and zoomed in to investigate further. I had no idea what they were saying, but it remained obvious that they were having an argument. I had to get down there before they escaped, or before the got the idea to use another air-to-surface missile to explode me where I stood. I looked further down the gorge and saw another opening with a shallow grade, easy to just walk, or limp, up. I took baby steps to the edge and sat down, then slowly pushed myself off on to the pile of dematerializing decomposing corpses. I landed poorly and rolled to the rocks below. I took another minute to stand back up, then I drug my leg behind me, up the grade to the top of the other side.

I kept my eye out for that BR55. I examined every inch of black rock in front of me, holding my left arm with my right hand and pulling a stiff dead leg behind me, dragging on as fast as I could. I finally spotted it, a few steps from where I stood. It blended right in with all the loose black gravel and rubble. The Battle Rifle had a special attribute in the OASIS, it was one of the very few rifles that could be fired with one or two hands, and had different stats accordingly. When I held it with one hand, the accuracy and damage stats reduced themselves, if I put a second hand on it, the stats would increase to almost double. However, I still had all my one handed weapon and gun specialization armor on, so using the BR55 with one hand for me, was just 75% effective insteads of 51%, and the accuracy debuff was a non-factor that had been canceled out by my own accuracy buff. I equipped it and moved along the edge of the ravine with a bit of pep in my limp. I didn't need the binoculars to see the two parties arguing.

Unfortunately they kept it civilized and the argument didn't escalate. It seemed like I was almost too late, the clones were picking which once were boarding the ship with the last man of the clean up crew. I assumed the craft had a capacity of four, but it was no matter, I didn't want any of them to get on that ship. The scope on the BR55 didn't really work with the one handed mode, but it still gave me an aiming reticle and a zoomed in view of the area I pointed to. I knelt down to one knee and put my injured left arm out in front of me bent to a right angle and let the far grip of the battle rifle rest there. I lined up the rifle and my eye, pulling the shoulder rest flush with me and the scope in line. I had a great shot, but not for the enemy I wanted, so I kept still and controlled my breathing. My ranger class buff kept stacking, the longer I stood still and aimed, I patiently watched the group resolve their issue and watched my Sniper Buff max out the bonus damage. I held my breath, closed and reopened my eyes, made one last minor adjustment to my aim, then I fired two bursts of three rounds in quick succession. I fell forward to the ground and laid flat in a prone position.

I couldn't confirm a kill or even a hit, until I heard return fire. None of it seemed close, I watched a large fireball travel down the opposite side of the ravine and crash into a rock they must have assumed I was taking cover behind. I turned my head subtly to look in their direction. The aircraft still hovered in place, and I could see the disappearing body of the last member of the clean up crew laying out flat under the craft. The remaining clones moved as a single, damaged unit towards my assumed hiding place, on the wrong side of the gorge. I changed positions with my legs and arms so I could watch and follow them through the scope. They way I held the BR55, put it into two handed mode and the damage stat skyrocketed. The accuracy decreased slightly, but still at manageable levels and my sniper damage buff started climbing again.

Six remained. One mage, two warriors, three rangers. I had the element of surprise once again. My thought from earlier crept back into my head, the clones traveled in various formations, which changed from time to time, but they always seemed to stack in one direction or another. So, in theory, if I waited from the right perspective I could line up a beautiful shot and hit most of them, if not all, with a quick burst. I waited and watched. They patrolled and inspected their surroundings, killing monsters that wandered too close, and it looked like they were going to proceed with their quest progress from before they were interrupted. They proceeded with an intense caution, there were less of them and someone could still be stalking them. I kept the scope tight on the last mage's head, he seemed to stay in the center of their party. Both warriors stayed in front and the three rangers stayed in the back, their formation changed to a straight line, my perfect shot was intimate.

The clone party made their way back down into the ravine and headed down to where they were previously, running right past me. BR55 still tight in hand, scope still centered high on their heads, I waited. The shot appeared, too perfectly, every head in line and tightly packed, it looked like they stopped to read a message. I didn't want to miss this chance, I held my breath and loosened my grip like last time. One last position shift made it look like there was only one person in my crosshairs, stacking them well. Every burst had three rounds leave the barrel, and I squeezed the trigger until the magazine emptied.

I looked at the aftermath through the scope, they moved as soon as the first burst of rounds connected, but not all of them moved fast enough. I killed the two rear rangers, and severely injured the third. They didn't have much cover and still were in shock from the attack, they managed to scatter still. I reloaded and looked back through the scope. It was only a matter of time before they found me, so I didn't see the need to continue to conceal my position. When I had a shot on the injured ranger, I hit him with two bursts center mass and he dropped dead. I saw the mage wind up to cast a large spell so I tried to line up a shot on him. One of the warriors stood in my way, but I still fired. It didn't seem to do much damage and he allowed the mage to finish casting. I preemptively side stepped to avoid the spell, continuing fire on the warrior. The clones had a hard time hitting me with ranged attacks under pressure, so I limped in a strafe perpendicular to the ravine, firing burst after burst in their direction until I had to reload. Then I just switched to my side arm and fanned all six shots of the revolver at them. The warrior in front stumbled and fell to a knee. Fireballs screamed past me as I walked towards the remaining party members, reloading both my BR55 and my revolver.

Rushing me from a knee, the injured warrior jumped forward with a large combat knife drawn. I unloaded five of the six shots from my revolver, it sounded like they just bounced off of him, shortly after he tackled me to the ground. The wrestling match ended abruptly when I landed one last shot between the chinks in his armor, emptying his hit points the rest of the way. I switched weapons, and then cast the dead warrior off of me firing as soon as I saw them standing around me. I hit both the mage and the remaining warrior with a damaging spray of bullets from my Smart Gun. The accuracy was nonexistent, the spread pattern on the gun went from the size of a golf ball to the size of a wall. It still got them to take cover long enough for me to stand and switch weapons again.

I stepped towards them with persistence and deliberance. I made each step crunch and grind loudly underfoot. Holding the battle rifle down at my waist, I stepped in front of both of them, still crouching behind a fallen slab of black rock. I motioned for them to stand and file out with the rifle, neither complied. The warrior had injuries and a small bleed, he also had damage ticking off of his health from my venom sac. Each time the bleed would tick, he would get a stack of the poison, he was as good as dead. The mage on the other hand, didn't look like he had taken any damage, maybe from a defensive shield. I noticed the mage was casting too late. I couldn't interrupt it with damage, but I started firing anyway. Magic missile exploded on my chest, point blank. I skidded backwards a few yards and fell on my back then slid a few more feet.

I lost most of my health, and I had already blown through all of my health items. I looked up past my feet, to see what was going on now. The warrior laid dead and the mage hung over the edge of the black slab, now flat against the ground, blown down from the explosion. I tried to stand, both legs were injured, now my left leg was in severe condition. The mage looked right at me, I looked away. He must be just as fucked up as I am right now. I'm not going to be going anywhere fast. Then, an ear piercing siren noise echoed and rang with a violent shaking intensity.

Zo: That clean up crew you killed is nuking your location. That siren means you have only one minuted.

"Fuck!" I said, looking around. There was absolutely no way in hell I was going to be able to trek it all the way back to my ship and blast off with in one minute, even if I wasn't injured so badly. I looked back at the mage, who was staring up at the sky. I looked up, to see what he saw. The clean up crews craft, still hovering in mid air. He started standing, I started to try to stand. The mage worked his way to his feet and stumbled to the rock face, he started feeling his way across the wall to an exit. I made it to one knee, and drew my revolver. It clicked and nothing happened. The mage clone turned his head and saw me pointing my empty pistol at him. He kept on his way. I worked my way to the other foot from the kneeling position. I had to chose to pursue an exit instead of a kill. He climbed a lip on the wall to my left and started the last leg of his climb up. I went right and shuffled up the slow grade of black gravel to the top. I circled around the edge of the grade to the top and saw the craft was in arm's reach. The mage crawled to his feet from the cliff's edge and saw me standing near the craft. I never put my pistol away, but I think he knew I didn't load it. I still pointed it at him.

"Either way, I'm dead." He said, ignoring my attempts to threaten him.

"Likewise, I suppose." I replied.

Zo: 20 seconds remaining. Evacuate now.

I jumped up to grab the ladder hanging from the hovering ship, he jumped at my legs and caught my foot. I dangled from the ship with one arm while he tried to pull me down.

"I'll take you with me, you son of a bitch!" The mage shouted, followed by another siren blast.

"I'm not so sure about that, Tim." I looked down at him, putting one round in my revolver, spinning it and whipping it shut. I cocked it, tried to steady as much as I could, between the shaky arms from all the damage and the seesaw motion of the hovering ship. I tried just kicking him loose, but he wouldn't have any of that, so I swung him back and forth, until he met my line of site. The shot felt blind, but it also felt lucking. He dropped off of me almost as soon as I squeezed the trigger.

I scrambled like a madman into the ship and and started disengaging and engaging all kinds of switches until the ship started moving forward then I pulled up and exited the blast radius just in time to see bright beam streak across the sky and down to the surface. I always thought that when they referred to nuking something, it was an actual missile item being activated and deployed. This time, the nuke happened to be a devastating orbital particle cannon. Which could move and chase targets, like what it was doing to me.

The bright blue energy beam closed in on my tail, I tried flipping more switches and hitting buttons to go faster, but I didn't really know this ship all that well, I couldn't even name where or what it was from. I finally hit the right buttons or flipped the right switches, I may never know, but the ship took off faster than I've ever flown before that point. I saw the particle beam shrink in the rear view camera and then dissipate a short time after. Once I hit orbit, I saw that the ship would move light speed. I set auto-pilot for wherever and wiped the sweat from my face and from under my visor.