“Maximus’ tournament makes sense,” Zelda said, hand on her chin, clearly thinking it over. She nodded. “That... that might be something. Maybe we can get a one-on-one with PlayaSlaya. Tell him about the database, feel him out as an ally. But you’re forgetting something, Kai.” She looked right at him. “Odditor demanded ante. The only way we were going to get a crack at his labyrinth was if we staked the database to do it. That’s not a risk we can take.”
“That’s what he said, but there must be something else he would want. Something of value we can stake. Hell, we’ll fake the database if we need to. Well, probably that’s not the best way to kick off a relationship with a potential ally, but what I’m trying to say is, other people run his labyrinth. They obviously stake things less valuable than Bernstein’s database. There have to be things Odditor is willing to accept as ante instead of the database. We just have to find out what.”
“I don’t think…” Zelda paused. “Well, maybe?” She shook her head as if shaking off the thought. “I’m not sold on that being the case.”
“But it is possible, right?” Kaiden said, waving his hand for her to agree.
Come on, think creative here. Be a bit adventurous.
She sighed.
“It’s possible. Sure.”
“Then let’s at least think on it. See if we can’t come up with something Odditor would accept. And, in the meantime,” he turned to Titus. “We can take down Maximus’ tournament.”
“It’s not a bad plan,” Thorne said, nodding to herself. “A bit crazy, and a bit of a stretch in a few – okay, a lot – of places. But... there might be something to this.”
Kaiden smiled at that. Smiled because maybe everything wasn’t set in stone, maybe nothing was certain, but what did that matter? If in the past they’d only reached for things that were certain, they’d never have made it this far.
“Sometimes it just takes a little faith, guys,” Kaiden said. “And maybe a little luck. But we can make this work.”
“A little faith, a little luck, and a whole lot of grinding,” Zelda said. “If we’re going to hit level fifty, which we have to in order to even qualify for Maximus’ tournament.”
“Actually,” Thorne said, her voice unsure at first. “I’ve been thinking about that. I need ten levels to hit fifty. You all are at level thirty-eight, so you need twelve. That’s a fair few, but not all that much. I... I might have a solution.”
“Oh?” Kaiden perked up at that. “But I was just about to give a pep talk about how we needed to start dedicating like twenty hours a day to mindless grinding. About how it was going to be hell, but we were going to pull together and fight through!” He shrugged. “It was going to be very rousing.”
His humor was apparently lost on Thorne. Or she was too distracted to notice it. She was looking off into space, mouth slightly open. Finally, she nodded to herself.
“This might just work.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Location Discovered: Langrangia
Faction: None
“Uh, are those orbital turrets going to be a problem?” Kaiden asked, pulling his eyes from the planet below them and to the massive Warden Corps turrets. Even as he asked, they must have picked up the Borrelly on their scanners. They came to life all at once, massive guns turning to lock on to the ship.
Remind me why we came here in the shuttle and not the Veritas II?
“Open a channel with them?” Thorne asked. Ellenton did so and Thorne leaned forward, peering out of the windshield of the Borrelly and toward the nearest turret. “Time to get to work,” she said, speaking slowly and enunciating clearly into the microphone.
“Access granted,” a robotic voice said through comms, and all at once, the turrets deactivated.
“That was… easy,” Kaiden said, marveling at the sheer size of the closest turret as Ellenton guided them past and down into the planet’s atmosphere.
“Only a handful of wardens know that password. Once those turrets activated, we had five seconds before they blew us to shrapnel. Must’ve told command a hundred times that we needed to change the password on the turrets at least monthly.” Thorne shrugged. “Guess I’m glad they didn’t listen to me. Still, let’s keep our signature as small as possible.” She looked to Ellenton. “Cut power to everything but emergency systems. Only use as much thrust as necessary, too. No reason to spike our infrared.”
“Woman, I know what I’m about,” Ellenton shot back, sounding only half joking. “But it looks like your suspicion was correct,” she added as they broke through the cloudy skies of the planet and eased down toward what looked to be a barren surface. “I’m picking up at least a hundred player signatures down there.”
Thorne smirked at that.
“Hold up,” Kaiden said, not believing what he was hearing. “Can we backtrack a bit? Why does this planet – home to nothing but a backwater Warden Corps outpost – have an orbital defense system? More importantly, why are there ‘hundreds of players’ down there?” He peered down to the rapidly approaching surface. It was totally empty.
“Land at the emergency exit,” Thorne said, pointing to the bottom of a small impact crater. It was surrounded on all sides by more of the same barren landscape. It might have been molten once, but now it was solidified and desolate. The was no movement, no ships, not even a single mob.
Ellenton huffed by way of response, but eased the shuttle gently on to the surface then cut the engines the moment they were down.
“Excuse me,” Zelda said, pushing into the cockpit. “What are we doing here? You still haven’t explained anything.”
Kaiden stepped next to her and nodded. “Seriously. Where are we and why are we here?”
Thorne looked at them both with a touch of confusion in her eyes.
“Sometimes I forget how short a time you spent as wardens. You’d have learned about this place if you’d stayed longer, but circumstances being what
