The Outlaw (Phantom Server: Book #2) by Andrei Livadny Read Free Book Online
Authors: Andrei Livadny
rotating piece of mangled steel floating toward me and peered into the gloom.
A dull light was falling across the corridor, seeping from a narrowly opened hatch. The serve had already scrambled off somewhere, quick and agile as an insect. My sensors didn't detect its presence anywhere.
A force field met me by the entrance to the deck's next sector. The long hangar behind it had gravity and a rarefied atmosphere.
This was just another repair dock. Machines froze motionless along its walls. Fine specks of dust floated in the air. The light was coming from somewhere lower and further on, where the floor dropped sharply, sloping down.
The motion detector pinged again. My target monitor lit up with two bright-red markers.
Unwilling to tempt providence, I shrank back, taking cover behind the nearest machine. My mind expander outlined the mobs' shapes. My throat turned dry.
Scaled-down copies of Phantom Raiders were moving toward me. I gulped, then hurried to study their signatures. No force fields, their armor all scorched and patched, their weapons admittedly weak, powered by unusual crystal-shaped batteries. My shivering subsided. This was a joke, really — a laughable travesty of the Founders' lethal craft.
Mechanically my finger pushed the rate of fire slider into the boosted power position. No one had ever managed to study a Phantom Raider before. Normally you couldn't even get a scrap of them, as in the case of critical damage they exploded in a bout of spontaneous combustion. But these two didn't seem to have annihilation units on board which meant I could potentially lay my hands on a unique trophy!
I took aim. Their worn-out hulls had only 35 pt. Durability. Thanks to my Robot Technician skill, I could breach them with one burst of fire.
Back at Argus, I had practiced signature-based fire. I'd never skimped on implants — and now the half a million credits I'd invested in SynapsZ were about to pay for themselves. The picture of the phantom drones' internal structure overlapped their visuals, allowing me to see the maze of pulsating power lines and pinpoint the vulnerable spots with a swipe of my eyes. A couple of bursts of precision fire, and I'd be the proud owner of some unique technological artifacts.
My abject fear had subsided, giving way to excitement.
The very existence of these miniature copies of Phantom Raiders promised me quite a few perks. I lingered, waiting for the scanners to finalize copying the files.
Just a little bit more.
In the course of scanning, you have received access to the objects' damaged databases. An authentication code has been retrieved. Would you like to activate it?
The message had popped up unexpectedly. My body broke out in a cold sweat. I hadn't even realized until that moment how great had the strain been.
Yes! I barely stopped myself from opening fire.
One second. Two. Three...
The target markers blinked, turning green.
Friendly contact established! You have successfully communicated the authentication code. Your Mnemotechnics skill has grown 1 pt.
I was already within direct visibility of the drones but they ignored me. Instead, they turned about, retracing their course. What kind of weird location was this? First it was NPCs who could steal your own reactor from under you but somehow didn't aggro you! That was just too easy. I had this gut feeling there was a catch there somewhere. I just couldn't have hacked their systems with my meager Level 1 in Mnemotechnics. And I hadn't even tried to — I had other objectives to take care of. They might simply be luring me somewhere.
I checked the logs.
Indeed, I discovered the record of the authentication code. The scanning and the consequent data processing had been performed by a special-purpose scanner I'd received from Jurgen as part of my new gear.
All right. Let's presume it was so. Even though I'd have loved to have mown them down and gotten two unique artifacts in addition to their scanner
A dull light was falling across the corridor, seeping from a narrowly opened hatch. The serve had already scrambled off somewhere, quick and agile as an insect. My sensors didn't detect its presence anywhere.
A force field met me by the entrance to the deck's next sector. The long hangar behind it had gravity and a rarefied atmosphere.
This was just another repair dock. Machines froze motionless along its walls. Fine specks of dust floated in the air. The light was coming from somewhere lower and further on, where the floor dropped sharply, sloping down.
The motion detector pinged again. My target monitor lit up with two bright-red markers.
Unwilling to tempt providence, I shrank back, taking cover behind the nearest machine. My mind expander outlined the mobs' shapes. My throat turned dry.
Scaled-down copies of Phantom Raiders were moving toward me. I gulped, then hurried to study their signatures. No force fields, their armor all scorched and patched, their weapons admittedly weak, powered by unusual crystal-shaped batteries. My shivering subsided. This was a joke, really — a laughable travesty of the Founders' lethal craft.
Mechanically my finger pushed the rate of fire slider into the boosted power position. No one had ever managed to study a Phantom Raider before. Normally you couldn't even get a scrap of them, as in the case of critical damage they exploded in a bout of spontaneous combustion. But these two didn't seem to have annihilation units on board which meant I could potentially lay my hands on a unique trophy!
I took aim. Their worn-out hulls had only 35 pt. Durability. Thanks to my Robot Technician skill, I could breach them with one burst of fire.
Back at Argus, I had practiced signature-based fire. I'd never skimped on implants — and now the half a million credits I'd invested in SynapsZ were about to pay for themselves. The picture of the phantom drones' internal structure overlapped their visuals, allowing me to see the maze of pulsating power lines and pinpoint the vulnerable spots with a swipe of my eyes. A couple of bursts of precision fire, and I'd be the proud owner of some unique technological artifacts.
My abject fear had subsided, giving way to excitement.
The very existence of these miniature copies of Phantom Raiders promised me quite a few perks. I lingered, waiting for the scanners to finalize copying the files.
Just a little bit more.
In the course of scanning, you have received access to the objects' damaged databases. An authentication code has been retrieved. Would you like to activate it?
The message had popped up unexpectedly. My body broke out in a cold sweat. I hadn't even realized until that moment how great had the strain been.
Yes! I barely stopped myself from opening fire.
One second. Two. Three...
The target markers blinked, turning green.
Friendly contact established! You have successfully communicated the authentication code. Your Mnemotechnics skill has grown 1 pt.
I was already within direct visibility of the drones but they ignored me. Instead, they turned about, retracing their course. What kind of weird location was this? First it was NPCs who could steal your own reactor from under you but somehow didn't aggro you! That was just too easy. I had this gut feeling there was a catch there somewhere. I just couldn't have hacked their systems with my meager Level 1 in Mnemotechnics. And I hadn't even tried to — I had other objectives to take care of. They might simply be luring me somewhere.
I checked the logs.
Indeed, I discovered the record of the authentication code. The scanning and the consequent data processing had been performed by a special-purpose scanner I'd received from Jurgen as part of my new gear.
All right. Let's presume it was so. Even though I'd have loved to have mown them down and gotten two unique artifacts in addition to their scanner
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