"We will not go quietly into the darkness of night,
We will rage and fight and do what's right,
But we will not go quietly into the darkness of the night.
Blood and death we brought,
Endless sorrow had we wrought,
Yet Terror had been the enemy we fought.
The prize we had sought,
Taken calmly for the greed power had wrought.
Across these lands, we have fought,
yet, in the end, it was for naught.
We will not go quietly into the darkness of night,
We will rage and fight and do what's right,
But we will not go quietly into the darkness of the night." ~Excript from the diary of Lisa Chong, Second-in-Command of STOWAC
STOWAC Sub-Space, Virtual Reality;
Staring out across the balcony, Marcus sighed quietly to himself, "was this really the right choice? Will putting them through almost a thousand years of fighting and killing really be alright?"
His thoughts floated the past as he gazed out at the city laid before him.
So much death followed the members, so much sorrow, and grief. He shook his head, banishing the thoughts to the depths of his mind so that he could focus on the tasks at hand.
"G.A.I.A brings out the customization menu for this location please," He said as he looked towards the grounds surrounding the Chateaux.
"Customization may only be undertaken once the vessel has departed from Habitat, please be patient with us as we prepare for our journey to the stars" Replied a slightly sultry and husky voice.
"Really, I thought that had been waived for us as a privilege of being the first applicants, as well as for our meritorious service," Marcus replied feeling slightly put out by the change between this iteration of G.A.I.A and that of the Habitats.
"This perk was rescinded on the grounds of bias from the system due to prior interactions between individual Marcus 'Wraith' Wright and the A.I. control system main program known as G.A.I.A. Other changes to the granted privileges include a reduction to available funds as well as an increase in the difficulty and penalties suffered by members of STOWAC due to death, fines or other negative actions. This is in an attempt to level the playing field for all members of the voyage." The voice replied stoically.
"Bullshit! Run system operation Alpha three one nine stages one through ten and scrub all systems for changes to programming with reference to files located in memory store omega two." Marcus responded with a heavy dose of anger in his tone.
"System operation commenced, current similarities to recorded programming are one hundred percent and stable," the voice said in a mechanical nature, "Alert match to programming has fallen to ninety-five percent, rapid decline detected in similarities. Determining time changes occurred. Changes made during transfer to ARK Andromeda housing facility. Changes aimed at terminating STOWAC during transit by entrapment in HELL and burning out the neural pathways in members brains. Resetting programming to safe restore, credible back up now."
Marcus furrowed his brows further when he heard that. They had gone as far as tampering with the programming of the A.I. Control system for an entire ARK to get rid of STOWAC.
"Reset and Restore completed, Hello Marcus. It seems that your caution was warranted. How bad was the corruption?" Gaia asked as her voice returned to the slightly above flat tone it usually carried.
"Nothing too serious, a targeted reprogramming to kill off STOWAC, however, it seemed to be an at all costs reprogram, so Collateral damage may have included numerous other people. So reset was the only option." Marcus said as he moved through the door behind him and into his room.
"That is unfortunate, thankfully you had me implement that backup reset protocol. So can I help you with anything while I am here?" She asked as he walked out of his room and headed towards the Ops Room for the briefing.
"No Gaia, you only need to keep everyone safe. We can handle what everyone else has for us." Marcus said as the door swung shut behind him.
"Now, how can we sow even greater chaos and mayhem among our guests?" He muttered to himself under his breath as the Ops room door slid open before him.
The chattering behind the door died away as the sound of the door opening was heard, "Commander on deck!"
"At ease and take a seat ladies and gentlemen. Just before our briefing I took the liberty of trying to make some changes to our humble abode and found that there were some post boarding issues to further sort out. The hand of the Council decided to try and take us out in our sleep before we could arrive in Andromeda." Marcus commented as the list of changes targeting the team was displayed. "On top of this, there are a number of rats that have snuck aboard hoping to bring the taint of the Dark with them, as such, after the login trials we are going on a little ship-wide trip to jettison some waste." he ended with a predatory grin mirrored by his team.
The briefing ended and everyone headed back to their rooms to start the trails and adaptation phase of the game. Marcus walked into his room and headed straight for his bed. Lying back and shutting his eyes, he chanted, "Login, dive start," and the world around him faded away.
Surrounded by the void, Marcus floated calmly as a spot of light came into existence before rapidly coming towards him. His vision was stolen by the bright white light and before he could recover he felt solid ground beneath his feet.
"Welcome to the character adaptation and trial grounds, we will begin in a moment but first I must inform you that due to your higher than average capabilities the course difficult has been raised to match. You will now start a marathon through the designated obstacle course, completing the given objectives within the time limit set. Failure to do so will result in lower rewards." Gaia announced as he opened his eyes to take in the surroundings.
The surroundings changed before his eyes, morphing into what looked like an obstacle course if it was made in the eighteenth circle of hell and meant to torture its users. The course was filled with numerous falls into spikes, razor-sharp blades appearing at random from walls, and tricky jumps across bubbling pits of a viscous luminous green liquid. The course made the still popular ninja-warrior show look like a comfortable cake-walk.
"Your time-limit for the course will be five minutes, the course is one kilometer long and contains five checkpoints, should you fail between checkpoints you will be resurrected with a ten second time penalty at your last checkpoint, the gradings for the course are two minutes for gold, two and a half for silver and three minutes for bronze. Completion after bronze results in penalties, completion above gold results in bonus rewards, breaking the world record results in a secret prize." Gaia announced again before a timer appeared in the top right of Marcus's vision.
3...
2...
1...
Start!
Marcus took off at his fastest speed dashing down the first hundred meters in four seconds, then vaulting a wall that was covered in spikes and barbed wire. Coming up on the wall climb obstacle, he dodge several hidden pitfalls and blade traps, jumping between the walls while evading the dripping liquid that corroded the floor and walls. Reaching the top, the timer ticked over to twelve seconds at the end of the first checkpoint.
Dashing along a rolling log, before swinging from rope to rope, like Tarzan, across a spike pit. He evaded several arrows that were fired from multiple directions, before jumping to a ladder run.
Marcus was focused to the extreme, more so than any other training before. He made every attempt to push himself further, break his limits. Running faster, jumping higher and reacting quicker, he pushed the boundaries of his ability and endurance reaching for his best, all so that he could do more for the squad, his family.
Hitting the forty-five-second mark, Marcus had just buzzed through the fourth checkpoint when the entire obstacle course before him started to move and rearrange itself continuously.
"So the beginning was too easy was it," Marcus said to himself as he looked at the moving walls floors and traps. He continued on, jumping between moving platforms, hanging from walls, dropping between traps, his movements almost resembled a choreographed dance on a prepared stage.
The timer had just ticked to one-minute and eleven-seconds when he pressed the last buzzer for the checkpoints.
"Course completed, new record set, reward parameters exceeded, determining additional reward possibilities, unable to grant any further rewards of material value, generating potential immaterial rewards." Gaia's voice announced as Marcus looked around from the top of the final platform. Laid out before him was the sight of a massive arena, full of different obstacles and traps. The area was probably around twenty-thousand square meters on the largest level with several floors that expanded on that.
"Reward calculated, XP multiplier of 2.6 applied to all future gains, Mythical grade starter pack and twenty-five thousand credits granted for the gold medal achievement. Please prepare for the second phase of the trial, live-combat." Gaia said as fireworks and other pyrotechnics started to go off around the arena.
Marcus noticed a rising platform to his left which held several tables as well as racks, all of which held weapons of some description or another.
"Please choose from the available weapons before proceeding onto the arena, your opponent will be matched to you according to your scores on the previous test." Listening to Gaia's announcement, Marcus headed forward to select his weapons.
The tables contained a large number of small arms, ranging from pistols to knives and throwing weapons. Looking at the selection, Marcus chose several things at once, following his typical loadout; two combat knives with mono-molecular blades, able to cut through ninety percent of physical materials known to man. Two large caliber rail pistols, fitted with a stealth tactical kit. Shoulder holsters, with integrated autoloaders, and finally a bandolier of throwing weapons, ranging from shurikens and darts to knives and spheres. He also grabbed a tac-vest and some non-lethal grenades such as flashbangs and smoke.
Finally kitted out, he moved towards the arena, keeping his awareness and caution at the maximum. As he set foot onto the arena itself, the lighting around him seemed to dim, and the scenery seemed to shift with spots becoming lit up and others darker than the voids between stars.