“How’re we going to do this?” Titus asked, disengaging from where he’d been exchanging hammer strikes with Clarissa. At level thirty-nine, she was the strongest of those who’d boarded, and considering Kaiden had told everyone to stop hitting her in order to not fuel Shield Link, she was still comfortably in the orange on health. Sitting pretty at sixty percent.
All the same, she knew she was outnumbered. Seeming panicked, she backed up. The door to the cargo bay was on one side of her; on the other side, a pressure-sealed door led to an external airlock.
We can work with that, Kaiden thought.
“Titus, hit her with a Shield Charge!” he shouted.
Ability: Improved Shield Charge
Charge at double your speed for 5 seconds. Direct impacts deal 100% of base damage.
Cost: 40 charge.
Cooldown: 2 minutes.
Energy surged into Titus’ legs, then engulfed him entirely. He shot forward in a blur and Clarissa just had enough time to raise her shield.
“Open the airlock, Acton!” Kaiden said.
“With pleasure.”
The door hissed open just as Titus slammed into Clarissa. Kaiden saw her eyes widen, then she was thrown backward and out of the airlock and into space.
No assisted kill notification came in; her suit was pressurized and, like all warden suits, had its own short-term air supply. But they didn’t need to kill her. This was close enough.
“Nice shot,” Kaiden said, nodding toward Titus.
“Thanks for the layup,” he said.
With the last of the boarders repelled, Kaiden let out a long breath, then slumped against the wall. Was it possible to feel physical exhaustion in a video game?
“Shall I have the pilot bring us around and finish off the last of our guests?” Acton asked through comms. “She’ll be no match for our turrets.”
“No,” Zelda said. “It’s more important we escape the corvette. Is it still following us?”
“We left it behind some time ago,” Acton replied. “Ramming it worked out pretty well, all things considered.”
Thorne flashed a smile at that.
“Looks like we don’t make that bad of a team,” she said, and at that moment, Kaiden couldn’t say he disagreed.
Chapter Fourteen
“You should eat,” Thorne said, nodding to Kaiden’s mostly untouched bowl of soup in between slurps from her own near-empty one. “You need to keep your energy up and your mind sharp.”
“I don’t know whether I should be more worried by the fact this soup-gel doesn’t have an expiration date or the fact that it almost tastes edible,” Kaiden said, slurping cautiously at his spoon.
“It’s supposed to be a gel, really. You just squeeze it into your mouth. But seeing as we have a kitchen, I added a bit of salt, a little bit of broth, and heated it all up.”
“To make a semi-soup, semi-gel abomination?” Kaiden said.
Thorne had pillaged a ton of the stuff from abandoned military reserves after the chaos of the Test. Each tube provided all the daily vitamins and nutrients a body needed. It was an extremely efficient way to eat. Furthermore, it was well documented that a hot meal was good for morale. Nutrients and a morale boost; what more could one ask for from food? Thorne frowned as her guests continued to make a fuss about the soup – particularly its taste, as if that was at all important.
“The good news is there’s enough of this stuff in the cupboard to last us for years,” Zelda said, only half paying attention to the conversation. She was on her handheld console, searching through the database as always.
Kaiden laughed. “That’s also the bad news.”
A looming shape filled up the entirety of the hallway as Titus emerged from the bathroom, drying his head with a towel.
“We complaining about the gel meals again? They’re not so bad, eh?”
He tossed the damp towel on the back of one of the dining room chairs as he passed.
“Hey, hey!” Thorne snapped her fingers at it.
Titus groaned and rolled his eyes, but moved the towel to the heated drying rack.
“I know we live in a swamp bunker, but there’s no reason it has to look like it,” Thorne said, hoping if she repeated it enough one day the big man would stop needing to be reminded. Though they’d likely overthrow the Party – or be captured by them – before that ever happened. “The dehumidifier has enough trouble keeping this place dry without damp towels lying around and itching to get mildewy.”
“Yes, Mom,” Titus grumbled, then shuffled off to the kitchen to get his own portion of gel-soup.
Kaiden slurped another noisy mouthful, then checked his handheld console.
“Acton should still have the ship on course toward Maximus’ guild base, but if we’re online in the next thirty minutes we’ll be able to pick up missions when he stops to refuel.”
“I’ll be ready,” Thorne said, then raised her bowl to her lips and sucked down the remains of the gel-soup, broth and all. “Mmhmm,” she said, trying to sound satisfied. “Invigorating.”
Kaiden shuddered.
“Huh, this is ominous,” Zelda said, pausing with her spoon halfway to her mouth. “‘Operation Killswitch,’” she said, reading from the database. “‘The latest attempt in the Party’s ongoing struggle to leverage control over Nova Online.’”
“That sounds bad,” Kaiden said.
Zelda set down her spoon and looked up at everyone.
“Bernstein’s mentioned in here several times that the Party has had its sights set on bringing Nova into its jurisdiction for some time. NextGen Games has always been too internationally and politically well positioned, though. Not to mention filthy rich.”
“Nova has always been something of a thorn in the Party’s side,” Thorne agreed. “The creation of the warden program was meant to ease that pain point. And it has, but not entirely. As you’ve seen, wardens can only do so much. They’re restricted to operating – mostly – within the limits of Nova. Within the limits of what NextGen says is okay.”
“Something tells me that doesn’t sit well with the Party,” Titus said, dropping into a chair with a steaming bowl of soup.
Thorne shrugged. “Not in the slightest, but what can they do?”
“Operation Killswitch, apparently,” Zelda said, but shook
