Leveled Up Love

Chapter 4-1

DaEvo flashed constant warnings to slow down and rest as Zack jogged home. Apparently, the app had access to the fitness tracking devices built into his wearable tech. Zack ignored the notifications until he was back in his building and riding the elevator up to his condo.

He ignored the stream of messages incoming from his teammates and leaned against the elevator wall, leaving streaks of sweat on the mirrors as he struggled to catch his breath and shivered in the air-conditioning. The clothes that had been fairly clean when he put them on were now drenched with sweat and sticking to his skin. He looked at himself in the mirror and winced. His face was tomato red, and the pools of sweat on the T-shirt outlined his gut. It wasn’t pretty. Maybe those bodybuilders had a point about exercise. Not a big point, but as Zack stared at his reflection, he almost wished he had taken advantage of the gym when he first moved in.

Style Update: -0.1

Style Update: -0.1Style Update: -0.1Yeah, yeah. Zack pulled off his OptiGlasses and crammed them into his jeans pocket. DaEvo couldn’t judge him if it couldn’t see him.

Once he reached his apartment, he punched in the code and pushed open the door. He gagged as the overwhelming smell of dirty clothes and rotting food washed over him. It hadn’t smelled that bad in here this morning.

He pulled off the sweat-drenched shirt, grabbed an energy drink from the fridge, and sank into his gaming chair. The leather stuck to his wet skin, but he didn’t care. He didn’t plan to move from that spot for the rest of the day anyway.

Zack picked up the controller for his gaming system and pressed the power button. He breathed a sigh of relief as the screens flickered to life. Then he unbuttoned his jeans so he could slouch comfortably.

This was more like it.

The Star Fury theme music blared through his surround sound speakers, and Zack took a long swig of his energy drink. He had missed the strategy session with the team, but thankfully he would be in time for the tournament. He even had a little bit of extra time.

This was a big tournament, and Zack planned to finish on top. Teams of four from all over the world would compete in several rounds over the next few months, and the teams that made the finals would travel to an in-person televised event at the Star Fury Convention in Las Vegas to show off their skills. The winning team would receive global recognition and join the pro circuit. This was Zack’s chance to prove once and for all that he was the best. The ultimate quest.

The fact that Zoe Cross was hosting the event and interviewing winners didn’t hurt anything.

Zack glanced at the poster of Zoe in the Armada uniform and grinned. No, that didn’t hurt at all.

He wouldn’t let Phil and a stupid dating sim take that away from him.

Zack launched out of the station, growled as he realized he was in the wrong star system, and hit the hyperspace thrusters. Good thing he’d way-pointed their training map.

“You’re here!”

“Where have you been?”

“What the hell is going on, Zack?”

His teammates’ chatter boomed through the apartment as they talked over each other in a clammer of accusations and relief. Judging from the background noise, they were under heavy fire.

Zack checked the timing and groaned internally. “Long story, but I’m on my way!”

“Yeah, yeah, just hurry up, would ya? We were supposed to be testing out the new formation, and it doesn’t work without you.”

Fazilnoor Kapoor, known to most as Faz, sounded truly peeved. His irritation made his Wisconsin accent stronger, which Zack found hilarious in spite of everything that had happened so far. When he first met Faz in college, he had found his classmate’s nasal accent combined with the Sikh’s traditional wear a little jarring. Now he didn’t think twice about the combination of traditional turban and cheesehead slang.

Faz kept ranting, but Zack turned his attention to piloting his spacecraft. His team was on the other side of an asteroid belt, so he needed to get through there quickly to reach them. Maybe he could break his record while he was at it.

He pushed his thrusters into overdrive and zipped around the asteroids. The ship maneuvered easily through the field, twisting and turning with the touch of a key and the yank of the joystick.

Zack sank further into his chair. His sweaty back sticking to the leather was the only reminder of the unpleasant morning.

A notification on the screen confirmed he had beaten his previous record for navigating the asteroid belt. Nice. It looked as though things were finally going his way. The actual base location and fight was in a well-known asteroid belt, and the team had run the entire thing multiple times. It was the closest approximation they had to what they expected the first round would be like.

As he neared the battle, bright flashes of light indicating unrealistic laser fire, streaks of moving light that were homing missiles and tiny dots for drones came into view. The speakers rumbled and buzzed, adding to the atmosphere, while in the corner, chat from the viewing Star Fury community flashed past. Just because they couldn’t take part didn’t mean they couldn’t watch.

The team was in the middle of the fight, trying to blast through the defenses, but the outpost had a layered defense system. Mines on the outside, drones farther in, then automated NPC Armada ships on the inside.

Zack opened up his thrusters to maximum and sped toward the battle. His team was in the thick of it. They had formed up in close formation, driving straight through—which would work beautifully once he was there to complete the formation. Without him, they didn’t have the DPS to cut through the respawning drones.

“Better late than never,” Jenny Romero said as Zack entered hailing distance. The only female in the group was used to giving as good as she got.

Zack called it the “short woman ego issue”—when she wasn’t around. He had no desire to get his head taken off.

Jenny was in the back as usual, playing the long game by having her drones drop auto-targeting laser mines in enemy space, ensuring the backup drones that were populating behind them couldn’t reach the team. The mine and drone strategy was a bit old-fashioned, considered spammy by some and dishonorable by the most stalwart Armada members, but Jenny refused to upgrade and said Corsairs didn’t care about honorable strategies as long as they worked. The bulky, multi-spherical drone deployer she maneuvered took hits from the Armada and shrugged them off, the thick hull plating more than adequate for the current rate of fire.

Greg Miller, their heavy-hitting missile and artillery boat, ran a much sleeker vessel than Jenny. He relied more on speed and force shields, allowing the sleek, bullet-nosed craft to provide cover for Jenny and watch Faz’s back. Greg was what others might consider a typical gamer: overweight, working a dead-end job in a grocery store, with an irascible personality.

Fazilnoor Kapoor—Faz—was in front with his ship acting as scout and interceptor, the smallest ship of the group. Probably the smartest member of the team—discounting Zack himself, of course—Faz was taking a year-long break, playing Star Fury in an attempt to sow his wild oats before his parents made him go to medical school.

Where Greg was fast for a medium-weight ship, Faz was just fast. And rather than use multiple weapon systems, he’d thrown nearly everything into concentrating his weapon system on his forward laser turret.

All around the team, the Armada ships swirled and spun, hammering at the close-held formation. Faz and Greg focused on picking off the drones in front of them, not yet daring to break out into a dogfight. The deeper they got, the more Jenny’s mines played their part, the automatic targeting on the mine lasers expanding their zone of control.

Zack cut his thrusters as he entered the back of the zone, cruising in on built-in velocity, and fired a blast from his new laser cannon to clear a path through a new set of populating drones. His ship was the linchpin of the operation, nearly as fast and maneuverable as Faz’s but more heavily armed. Also, less armored and a hell of a lot more expensive to replace when it was inevitably blown up from time to time. Unlike real-world money, Star Fury credits had to be earned. Good thing Zack spent so much time running missions.

Zack barked orders to the team, his voice cutting off complaints as he controlled the team’s maneuvers. Since he’d just joined, he had a full bank of energy and he let loose, damaging Armada ships and tearing through force shields with impunity before he slid into position.

“You’re loose, Faz.”

Now that Zack was there, Faz peeled off to harry the ships the team had damaged but not taken down. “For cripe’s sake, it’s about time!”

“Chill. We got this. Marauder on your right, Faz. Greg, that Zed-3 is trying to get onto your six. Jenny, switch over to the… mine spread formation seven.” Rattling off orders, Zack maneuvered his ship, blasting away at enemy ships.

Long minutes drew on as they took down ship after ship and even the automated drone deployers on the base. With the entire area around them littered with half-disabled ships, they were finally getting back on track.

“Finish them!” Jenny said. “I’m swamped over here.”

Zack blasted all the disabled ships within range with the laser cannon, then flushed his entire rack of missiles again. His monitors went white from the force of the explosions, the rumble from the ship making him grin. Everyone knew it was unrealistic, but it sure was fun. Jenny squeaked in alarm, and Faz swore.

“Dude! A little warning next time? You almost hit me.”

“You said to finish them,” Zack said defensively. “Let’s pull back and regroup. The tournament starts soon.”

“And we still haven’t tested our new formations,” Jenny said. “You were supposed to be here an hour ago.”

“Yeah, what happened?” Greg asked.

Greg covered Jenny as she recalled her drones and backed away from the battle. Faz flew circles around them, both showing off and scouting for anyone who might try to hinder their retreat.

“Long story,” Zack said. “I’ll tell you after the tournament round.”

They settled in a safe distance away from the battle, having given up on finishing off the base. A countdown to the tournament appeared in the corner of Zack’s gaming monitor, and he guided his ship into its place in their formation. They would be automatically teleported to the tournament once the countdown reached zero, and they needed to be prepared. Luckily, all their expendable munitions would be refilled automatically, so that wasn’t a concern.

“Any last-minute words of wisdom, Captain?” Jenny said with more than a hint of sarcasm.

Zack sat up straighter, remembering his encounter that morning before Phil had interrupted him. “Yeah, I ran into some weird, automated Armada drones earlier. They were stronger than they should have been and landed a few hits on me. It might be something from the latest update, so watch out for those.”

“That would have been nice to know about in time to actually do something about it,” Jenny said.

“Focus,” Greg said. “It’s time!”

The battle in front of them faded to black as they were teleported to the tournament dungeon. They respawned in a different quadrant of space, empty except for the four of them and a nearby star with jets of plasma shooting from its surface. Before Zack could comment, a wave of enemy ships flew out from behind the star and raced toward them.