Continue Online (Part 3, Realities) (19 page)

"We need to leave, now." The colossal orb locked on us. Both the small projection and reality outside reflected an unwelcome situation. Only months of strange monsters in Continue Online helped me stay remotely calm.

"That would be wise," Hal Pal said.

I swung the ship around with a quick one-eighty and slammed both feet onto gas pedals.

Session Forty Seven – Shark Bait

Our combat started with another swelling round of Flight of the Valkyries. Instead of a giant spear-toting Viking charging down the field to try and die gloriously, it was me, Dusk, and Hal Pal in a spaceship. Size wise we were basically goldfish trying to escape a monstrous shark nearby.

I tried to dodge behind an asteroid in hopes of slowing the creature's pursuit.
[Leviathan]
exploded through the giant space rock and sent pieces everywhere. Small red flashes appeared on the screen indicating shield damage from huge pebbles.

"Voices!" The noise amplified in our small two seat compartment. "Ideas, Jeeves, I need an idea!"

Hal Pal managed to sound absurdly calm. It turned to look at the displays and simply suggested, "Fly faster."

"Easier said than done," I muttered while trying to swerve around another rock. We clipped the side and my shield dipped down even more.

"One moment. I will attempt to micromanage the energy allocations." Beeping noises shortly followed its statement. I watched green bars dim down to reflect a change in energy direction.

"We need those shields." I tried not to think about how easily our ship would be crushed without them. "There's too many rocks."

"We can exit the asteroid field. It is shallow."

"Then we'll have nothing between us and those teeth." I jerked my head back while keeping both eyes forward. Hal Pal's idea would have been neat if we weren't already losing in terms of speed. This creature moved surprisingly fast for something with no visible means of propulsion.

"We need to go faster," Hal Pal replied with a muted hint of worry to its voice.

I needed to go to the bathroom. Not a lot, but the abrupt situation of being chased around by a giant space eel called
[Leviathan]
almost scared the piss out of me. Everything took on a new level of panic as my bladder conspired with space monster.

"We need shields." I tried to stay calm. Part of me felt upset at not getting the bigger spaceship. Though in a dogfight against a giant space raid boss a slightly bigger ship would mean nothing.

Space was huge. Rocks zipped by. I wove between a series of three. Nothing slowed the giant beast down. Two small windows on either side functioned as rear view mirrors. The image of the
[Leviathan]
simply shouldered everything out of the way.

"Weaknesses?!" I jerked the wheel to one side. Dusk slid with a hiss. It felt like he'd nibbled on my calf.

"Heavy ordinance. Paralytic concoctions in absurd quantities. Larger spaceships." Hal Pal read off a list of complications in the same manner it might identify errors with an ARC unit.

"We only have energy attacks," I shouted and winced from the noise. Another jerk sent Dusk scrambling. His nails skittered across the floor. "Health?!"

A fight like this got me worked up. I felt a rush of adrenaline that William Carver must have enjoyed constantly with each boss fight. Part of me felt giddy, this was no giant dragon. Though it was, in space. A space
[Leviathan]
which ate ships. Charging it would be absolutely disastrous.

"Should we fight it?" I tried to keep calm, but it was hard. Continue Online gave me monsters of an easy to grasp size. This thing, huge. Just massive. It made space seem much smaller. Mostly because there wasn't enough between us.

[Leviathan]
's giant snout bumped into the back our ship. I twisted the engine and rolled the ship along one side of the creature. An unpleasant snapshot of the creature's blinking eyeball made my pulse skip unexpectedly.

"Probable outcome of direct confrontation is the cessation of life." Hal Pal's colors of gold and dirt both drained of luster. "That is less than desirable."

One lip curled down in a frown. We had so little in this ship to fight back. I saw our third party member on the ground and hoped he might have a way through.

"Dusk!" I tried not to shout. Every time my voice got too high the small cockpit amplified everything. "Options? Escape routes? Secret zones?"

Dusk always had something. The small
[Messenger's Pet]
turned raptor seemed less interested in answering my question and fully invested in hissing.
[Leviathan]
's body wiggled causing our small ship to be violently slapped. Our shield flashed even lower.

"I know it's big! I need options." My voice nearly spiked in pitch but was reined in by clenching metal teeth. A quick jerk of the wheel and abrupt change in engine output prevented us from hitting another asteroid.

"Hull self-repair functions dropping. Shield restoration dropping. Fuel usage elevated." Hal Pal started citing a line of status updates. "Distance between Leviathan's teeth and our ship decreasing rapidly."

"I thought you were doing something with the energy."

"I am, User Legate. Otherwise, we would be terminated already," Hal Pal responded. I tried not to grumble, turning the engines up a notch still hadn't saved us.

I yanked on the wheel again, pulling back and twisting up. My piloting skills were terribly low, but desperation fueled another nausea inducing spin.
[Wayfarer's Hope]
rolled poorly over the top of
[Leviathan]
's body. The eel-like creature tried to twist in pursuit only to jab its own side with teeth.

"Damage has been inflicted. A drop in health equating to three percent," Hal Pal said, sounding vaguely pleased.

"I'll take it." Both feet slammed on the engine pedals again to take advantage of our lucky break. "Tell me that our shield's recharging, please."

"Affirmative. Fuel reserves still dropping. We will be able to sustain this pace for seven more minutes. Eight if we wish to retain optimism."

"Optimism is good." I spared a glance for the nearly frantic
[Messenger's Pet]
. Dodging around objects at high speeds caused our shield to chip away. "Dusk, I need an out."

The
[Messenger's Pet]
always had a way through. First, he chased off that giant ink monster when I posed as William Carver. There were other occasions afterward, like escaping from bandits and navigating the
[Grand Labyrinth]
. Dusk kept hissing and making concerned chirp noises.

I ran through the options while trying to keep up evasive maneuvers. The only thing keeping me alive was the fact that there were no other spaceships in this region of space. Floating rocks were barely avoided by our amazingly responsive vehicle, despite my low skills.

The first option, load Dusk into a cannon and launch him at
[Leviathan]
's eye. The idea made me laugh but solved nothing. We had no torpedo tubes and I had no idea if Dusk would reappear here, in Continue Online, or my Atrium. A moment of worry caused me to successfully hit a floating asteroid.

"User Legate, we must avoid getting hit in order to continue functioning," Hal Pal said.

"I know," I said, trying not to yell and concentrated on weaving past another rock. They were all over, but free flying out in space would put us too far away from the
[Wayfarer Seven]
or too close. Following that line of thinking, leading a ginormous space eel that ate starships toward our base would be bad.

The final option, run and hope one of these rocks had something useful. The fuel gauge was dropping rapidly while our pursuer showed no signs of slowing down. If anything, the mouth threatened to swallow us with every passing dodge. Only by twisting the creature's body back around and taking advantage of our small size did anything progress.

Dusk kept skittering around trying to grab on to something with his feet. His tail jabbed into the floor like an anchor. The angry noises from him were as much from our wildly spinning viewpoint as the giant monster.

I tried not to feel sick. Days in the training simulator and cleaning our mothership's hull helped prevent me from losing it completely. If only that gas giant in the distance would stop spinning so much.

"I know. I know!" My foot slipped off the pedal. Our ship didn't lose speed but the attempt at rolling away failed. A message flashed up about skills both growing intensely and failing to meet a check.

[Leviathan]
opened its giant mouth and snapped at the backside of our ship. Our shield shattered while a new message popped up saying our hull was damaged. Luckily none of us needed oxygen or this would be that much worse.

Everything felt suddenly quieter. Maybe it was the giant hole behind Hal Pal's seat. The AI looked halfway to panic stricken but also somehow detached. A brief moment of sadness came over me at my traveling companion's inability to express emotions. The thought was chased off quickly, Hal Pal had no issues expressing his thoughts.

"User Legate!" Its voice was fairly clear. It felt more like an internal message than any sort of external one. "I do not wish to be eaten!"

"Me either!" I said while turning back to the wheel. "Hang on!"

"I do not know what will happen!" My friend was loud. I felt shocked and turned back again to give the scene a deeper look. Hal Pal was losing his grip as the ship accelerated in different directions. Our ship lost a lot of speed due to missing a chunk of the frame.

"Shit," I said, sounding far less upset than the situation warranted. The wheel jerked and we pulled away from the mouth past the giant eyeball again.

"Dusk! Acid spit attack, go!" Dusk scrambled toward the hole in our ship to attack. I channeled my inner Xin and flipped it off in conjunction.

The
[Attack]
command boost from
[Domestic Trainer]
ability activated. Dusk turned and leapt up to the hole and jabbed his tail into a new spot. Moments later he was sending the space game version of fireballs right into the large creature's eye.

Big green gobs of spit almost peacefully floated across the distance. The creature took another two percent of damage which stacked on top of the minor amounts from ramming into objects. Part of me felt proud that we had made a raid creature lose a total of ten percent of its health.

[Leviathan]
twisted and coiled upon itself. One giant eyelid batted quickly to try and get rid of the multiple globs staining its orb. Finally, it hung there huffing while clearly failing to see out one reddened eye. I guess it had enough moisture in its body to get watery. The large lid blinked repeatedly while scanning about.

"Good job, Dusk," I said quietly, unsure how well a space faring monster might hear.

Our shield was gone. The health of the ship near empty and a fuel gauge sat even lower. Nothing nearby could offer any real reprieve.

"Come on. We need to hide," I said.

Both feet lightly depressed the gas pedals and I wove our ship along the creature's side. Finally, I drove the
[Wayfarer's Hope]
into a spot on the giant tail. I could only hope that a creature of this mass, one that ignored asteroids five times our size, wouldn't think twice if we quietly sat here.

I huffed my chest up and down for air that didn't exist around us. Dusk kept the chirping down but looked around swiftly. Hal Pal's eyes were wide with what had to be fright. We stayed that way for minutes, jumping at the slightest vibration from the
[Leviathan]
or rocks bumping into it. Finally, we both started moving again. We were vaguely safe, for now.

"How long before the ship's repaired?" I tried to ask quietly.

"Hours. Many, many hours." Hal Pal's words felt less complex than normal. The AI might be on the verge of a breakdown.

"Are you okay?" I asked while undoing my chest harness. We were no longer jerking around wildly fighting against inertia's pull to change directions. A human probably would've been squashed by some of the maneuvers I put us through.

"Negative, User Legate."

"Anything I can do?" I asked. Repairs made no sense to me, but I could follow directions.

"I do not know," Hal Pal responded. The idea that my friend was at a loss worried me. It always had commentary or a response. This most likely had to do with Hal Pal's singular existence within Advance Online.

"Do you want to log out?" I suggested. We might lose the ship and our contribution, but we would be alive.