Spacebound Chronicles

Chapter 13: Gash Hunter

After three sessions of digging through the frozen shipwreck of a luxury starcruise, The Glimmer, Logan could not feel more glad to see the Amphibian, Snorri Gian’s private starship, descending through the blizzard, it’s green hull finally breaking the white monotony of the scenario. The looting experience had been made sufferable by the presence of other less patient treasure hunters who made him company before giving up and riding their Snow-Hoppers back to Foxtrot Outpost.

Considering Foxtrot Outpost was three Snow-Hopper hours away, Logan was determined to not leave until he was sure every last piece of jewelry had been properly scavenged.

“Logan!” Snorri’s parroty voice echoed through the wreckage, almost muffled by the howling winds. The alien spymaster was standing on the airlock of his still airborne ship.

Then… who was flying it?

“I’m here!” Logan waved his robotic arm and jumped up and down on the deck of what appeared to have been The Glimmer’s ballroom.

“Ask permission to lapse!” Snorri yelled.

“What?”

“Say ‘Requesting permission to lapse’!”

“I can’t hear-”

But before he could end the sentence Snorri leaped out of the ship. Logan’s eyes widened at the fall that would have killed a lesser character, but Snorri somersaulted and landed light as a feather.

“Just hold on to me,” the alien said as he hugged Logan and pressed a button on his wrist.

Suddenly, the snow, the wrecks and the cold were gone, and they stood together in the Amphibian’s cockpit. On the captain chair, where Snorri belonged, there was a man with beard and hair so long and unkempt Logan briefly mistook him for an alien.

“Hi, Logan!” the man jumped from the chair and pulled the others into a group hug with his huge hairy arms sticking out of a pelt vest. “It’s so great to meet you!”

When he finally let go, Snorri took a deep breath and spoke:

“Logan, this is the friend I talked about, Gash Hunter.”

Logan frowned. He did not even expect to see Snorri today, let alone a friend.

“Looks like you bamboozled him, Snorri!” the rough man said with an odd giggle.

“Remember when we talked about your class choice under the Blue Tree,” Snorri said, “and I mentioned a friend who was a self-made Dark Matter ninja?”

“Oh…” he studied Gash carefully for a second. If he was to guess by the looks, ninja would be his last bet. Maybe a Pirate. “Nice to meet you, Gash.”

“I’m so excited to teach you!” Gash opened a wide smile of yellow stained teeth. “But first we need to get something!”

“A Dark Matter Diamond,” Snorri said.

“I thought you only needed crystals for advanced skills,” Logan said.

“What do I think I’m gonna teach you, silly?” Gash Hunter cackled. “We are going straight to the top!”

“And what is it you’re going to teach me?”

“You’ll see. I won’t spoil the surprise. Oh!” Gash looked startled. “My brownies should be ready; I’ll be right back!”

And like that, in a flash, he was gone.

“Come on,” Snorri motioned to the navigator’s chair as he took the pilot’s for himself. “Let’s set course.”

“Interesting figure, your friend.”

Snorri laughed. “Believe it or not, that caveman is actually a twelve-year-old girl.”

Huh… that explained a lot.

“So, how was looting The Glimmer?” Snorri asked as the Amphibian rose away from the icy shipwreck.

“Not good, not terrible. Found things I can sell, not many I can use.”

“Where?”

“What?”

“Where did you find the most loot? Was it evenly distributed over the ship or…”

“Now that you mention it,” Logan gazed at the thinning atmosphere outside, “most loot was in the crew decks or engine rooms. Very little on passenger decks.”

“Interesting… So, I assume there were not many passenger corpses?”

“Here and there. What’s this about?”

“Did you check the flight computer as I asked?” Snorri ignored Logan’s question.

“I did. Or tried to. There was no flight computer.”

Snorri turned away from the helm, jaw clenched and eyes distant until he spoke again:

“Destroyed?”

“Taken. Before I arrived. Jo- Snorri, what’s this about?”

“A puzzle,” he said. “I’ve seen my share of shipwrecks, they are always freighters or warships, never luxury cruises.”

“Maybe it’s an update.”

“If it were, it would make sense to put loot in wealthy passenger corpses, would it not? But the loot was in staff areas, and there were few passenger corpses, possibly because most of them respawned elsewhere.”

“Players?”

“Indeed, and player-boarded ships never crash. Not randomly,” Snorri said.

“You think someone caused this crash? Why? How?” Logan asked.

“All questions that could be answered by the flight computer,” Snorri said darkly. “I do not believe this was a coincidence.”

No, probably not… And Snorri had sent him to investigate in exchange of loot. He felt a little betrayed, but, in the end, he still got what he came for.

Scott was pondering if this was the time to finally bring up the Chimeras, to ask if Joey knew anything about them and what, even if for that Scott needed to admit to his unauthorized session with Snorri. The thought was shoved aside by the sudden return of the bearded twelve-year-old girl.

“I’m back! Brownies were great. Are we there yet?”

“Not nearly,” Snorri grunted.

“Where are we going?” Logan asked. A blue holographic keyboard was being projected before his hands and a tiny screen before his robotic eye.

“We are going to the Maze! It’s so cool there, you’ll see!” Gash answered. “That’s where you find Void Diamonds!”

“Void?”

“Yes! Dark Matter Diamonds always relate to an element, this Void Crystals are filled by space! The Maze is the only place we know of where you can find it.”

Logan was visibly confused.

“And what do they do?”

“You’ll see!” Gash then stared closely at the blue holograms before Logan. “Are you talking to your girlfriend?”

What? Carol? No! How did he… Snorri!

“I think he is,” Snorri said, Joey’s trademark mischief smirk right there on his red alien face.

“What her name again?” Gash asked.

“She is not my…”

“Carol,” Snorri said.

For the remainder of the trip they had to endure a three-hundred-pound tenor singing about Logan and Carol sitting on a tree.

***

“That’s the Maze?” Logan stared through the Amphibian’s viewport gaping.

Logan had expected a bunch of walls and dead ends on a planet, maybe a minotaur and traps. He did not expect this. The size of ten football stadiums lost in space, the maze was comprised of thousands of dark tentacles entailed into each other, short but repetitive pulses of violet energy running along them.

“Pretty a-maze-ing, right?” Gash Hunter rested a hand on Logan’s shoulder, joining him to contemplate the dark webbing floating freely in the void. “They say it formed after someone exploded a nuke into a blackhole. Cool, right?”

“Very.”

“The ship can’t get any closer,” Snorri said, leaving the pilot seat. “Spacesuits and backpacks, everybody.”

***

Logan had never been in a spacesuit before, but the claustrophobic gear was the least of his concerns as he floated through the void between Snorri and Hunter. The feeling of emptiness, the continuous forward motion and the lack of anything to hold onto, except for the tow cable hooked to his waistline, surfaced memories of a younger Scott riding a roller coaster. However, despite the absence of drops and loops, the spacewalk inspired substantially more panic. There was… something about the emptiness of space, something about the promise of an eternal drift through the cold darkness and the awareness that one would be absolutely helpless and alone in such situation…

That something freaked him out.

“We’re close,” Snorri’s voice warned them over the radios and soon their feet touched the dark tendrils that formed the Maze, an inexplicable but very welcome gravitational pull acting over them.

Having attached their safety cables to the dark walkway, which was considerably wider that it looked from the safety of the ship, they proceeded into the network of black matter and violet pulses. It took no more than twenty seconds of progress for the Amphibian to be lost from sight.

“Do we even know the way?” Logan asked.

“We follow the pulses,” Snorri said. “They come from the very core of the Maze, that’s where we find the Crystals.”

And as if on cue, the pulses stopped. Snorri and Hunter suddenly stopped, but there was more to their stances than just expectation. They were profoundly wary, braced…

“Jump…” Snorri said softly. In the distance, a stronger, brighter, violet pulse incoming. “Jump! Now!”

Snorri jumped, a wave of purple lightning storming by the spot he had stood. Logan hesitated, but ultimately did so too. Unlike most jumps, though, there was no gravity to pull him back down, leaving his body adrift until Gash Hunter’s strong hands grabbed his ankle and pulled him to the safety of another dark tendril above (or below, maybe even beside) the one where they stood before.

The pulses had returned to their regular and harmless rhythmic pattern, and they proceeded. Another two energy bursts would occur along the way, and as they successfully evaded all of them, Logan could only wonder what would happen if they got hit by one. Certainly nothing good.

About two thirds of the way in, Snorri fired his pistol at something over them, and the target exploded quietly in the vacuum of space. It took Logan a little while to comprehend what exactly his friend was shooting at.

Spherical floating robots, three articulate arms with claws and mining lasers. But they were not attacking. The further inside they went, the more frequent the robotic apparitions became. Still, they never acknowledged the players blowing them up.

“Why are we shooting the poor bastards?” Logan asked as Snorri scored his thirteenth hit. Hunter, too, was having his fun.

“These poor bastards will be a thorn in our side soon enough,” Snorri grunted between shots. There was a cluster of about a dozen miner-bots ahead.

“They turn evil when you get the crystal. They don’t let you leave!” Hunter explained. “The more we destroy now, the less shooting at us later. By the way, where is your gun?”

Logan raised his robotic hand, now gloved by the spacesuit. His palm canon was his only ranged weapon, but shooting through the spacesuit seemed like a bad idea.

“I guess I shouldn’t…”

“No, you shouldn’t,” Snorri said. “Don’t shoot unless you want to experience death by depressurization. Feels pretty bad.”

Logan acknowledged and pushed forward, watching as the little miners detonated into clouds of debris. About twenty dead robots later, they arrived at the core of the Maze.

No one needed to explain that area.

A violet round space from where all the Maze’s branches originated, on its core a massive obelisk of dark glass irradiating the purple energy in rhythmic bursts. While Logan gawked at the Dark Matter shrine, Hunter got right to work, laser tools digging through the crystalized darkness.

Glancing around, Logan could see no more robots, not this close to the core.

“Logan!” Gash Hunter yelled and tossed a dark shard in his direction. He grabbed it, and before he could thank the hairy human was back at work. Twenty minutes later, the obelisk was reduced to a fragile column, and countless more crystals stuffed Gash’s and Snorri’s backpacks.

“I can carry some,” Logan offered.

“No, you can’t,” Snorri said. “Not without triggering perma-death. You’re not ready for that risk.”

“Wait, you’re risking perma-death?! For crystals?” Logan asked.

“I have a business to run,” Hunter said. “Besides, we aren’t scared of miner-bots.”

“How about pirates?” a gravelly voice echoed from one of the entrances to the core chamber, a human standing alongside two mercenary aliens.

As more scoundrels blocked every other entrance, they knew they were surrounded.