EDITH >CYCLOPS> NIC SCARLET: 4 | AZURE: 7

Nic punched the air in front of him as he floated again in the post-life black abyss. “Come on!” he shouted, grateful that his squad’s helmets muted his audio during death, even though they were all in the same room on the Corvette. He didn’t want to let on how outmatched he felt in this moment. It would be bad for group morale.

Not to mention his pride.

Soon enough, he spawned back in. This time, he emerged from a module with a much better vantage point of the battlefield. It was situated at the edge of a shallow cliff overlooking two other proxybot modules that were separated by a cluster of squat boulders. He couldn’t tell if the modules both belonged to Team Azure, but he knew at least one of them had to—his previous respawn point didn’t look anything like the terrain down there. With only a few landmarks as reference points, he lost track of their starting spawn, too.

“You put a dent in it,” said Perri. “RTIFIS reads 92% hull integrity on the Cyclops.”

“Better than nothing,” Nic sighed.

“Just sayin’ 2% of that is from me,” Jarek added. “Before the rocket got me, that is.”

“That means my frags did 3% damage each.”

“Impeccable math, gentlemen,” said Maqsud in a condescending tone. “Now, what do we plan to do about the other 92?”

Maybe contribute to the effort before being snarky about it, Nic thought irritably. But he wouldn’t dare to say something like that out loud. “I’m open to suggestions.”

“I say we look for something tactical like a Sniper Rifle. Perhaps an Upgrade Pak would help.”

“I don’t know,” said Perri. “That thing is kind of dominating the battlefield right now. If we go out on a scavenger hunt on foot, we’ll be toast.”

“She’s right,” Nic agreed. “We need to concentrate our fire. If we each throw every Grenade we have, that’ll only take... Um, let’s see...”

“If you’re trying to calculate how many Grenades it would take to bring down the Cyclops at this rate, I already did the math in my head,” said Max, “and it equals too many.”

“I was thinking of tracking down another vehicle,” Perri offered. “Fight fire with fire?”

Nic shook his head. He still hadn’t gotten used to nixing his unseen body language, and at this point, he just shrugged it off internally as a reflex that couldn’t be helped. “No. There’s no time for that either. We’ll spend more lives looking for an Ace when we could be throwing 5s and 6s at it.”

Max gave a perplexed scoff. “What in the galaxy are you talking about, Nic?”

“Throw everything you have at it. Grenades first in case you die. SMG next. Empty your Pistols. If you find any weapons or Paks along the way, by all means use them. But our top priority is spending these lives doing as much damage as we can. Until we bring it down, Azure is just going to collect free kills. Use what we know we already have rather than waiting for something that’s not a guarantee.”

“Understood,” Jarek replied. “Everybody else with us?”

“Affirmative,” Perri said reluctantly. It was clear she wasn’t thrilled, but in the little time that Nic had known her, she seemed like the type to pick her battles.

Max just sighed. “Sure, let’s try it your way.”

Nic trusted that Shanti got the message. Without her tagging anything, it was impossible to know what she was thinking or what her plans were.

It took them a couple of minutes to carry out their objective, and more than a few deaths between them. They unloaded every round of ammunition that their virtual lifespans allowed them. The vehicle’s tagged hull capacity crawled down toward zero at a snail’s pace.

Nic’s third death came when he was unstrapping his SMG and the Cyclops spat a rocket directly at him. The impact, heat, and noise were all painstakingly communicated to him through the SimSuit, such that he could vividly imagine standing unprotected out in the open while an unguided rocket-propelled bomb blew his real body to smithereens. He shuddered in the respawn void.

And so, when it came time to deal the killing blow to the Cyclops, he only felt a tiny bit guilty that he was stealing the rest of Team Scarlet’s thunder. It’s a team effort, he assured himself. I just happened to be the lucky one.

He ran perpendicular to the vehicle’s path and narrowly avoided another rocket—the explosion did damage his proxybot slightly, and the shockwave threw him through the thin air of Planet Gwher. But he lived.

said RTIFIS.

Nic obliged. Both of his Fragmentation Grenades detonated on the already battered, smoking hulk of a vehicle, triggering its preprogrammed self-destruct sequence. The explosion threw dust and debris in all directions.

NIC >FRAG> CYCLOPS (4) SCARLET: 8 | AZURE: 15

“Woo!” Nic exclaimed, and he heard Jarek and Perri cheering through the team chat. “RTIFIS, squad status report, please.”

NIC [40%] 5|3 JAREK [82%] 1|4 PERRI [89%] 1|3 MAQSUD [76%] 1|3 SHANTI [100%] 0|2

“Crisis averted,” he breathed. “Now that we leveled the playing field, let’s get back to business as usual.”

Teams Scarlet and Azure traded a few more deaths and kills—Nic got another two with his SMG while Maqsud netted one with his Pistol. Perri and Shanti died once more each.

Nic was so thrilled to be back in proxybot combat that he overlooked a silent notification blinking in the corner of his HUD.

ITEM DROPS AVAILABLE (1)

‘Item’ Drops, he thought. I wonder why it doesn’t say Weapon Drops like in the Final. He accessed the next menu—a veritable feast of options.

-WEAPONS- -UPGRADE PAKS- >>SHOTGUN >>ARMORIZER >>SNIPER RIFLE >>INCOGNITO >>ROCKET LAUNCHER >>JETPACK(…)

While the standard three weapon choices remained the same, he was also granted the option to select any one of seven Upgrade Paks, including a couple he never saw in the Final. “Select Turretbot.”

A rotating transparent diamond hologram appeared on his HUD, situated a short trot from the base of the cliff. Nic crouched and skidded down the rocky slope, and even though he knew he was in no physical danger, the primal fear that he might fall still gripped him on the way down. Meanwhile, a stealth drone darted by overhead and spat a rocket-propelled astrosteel crate directly onto the waypoint. The black metal box hissed open on his approach with a whiff of steam.

“Upgrade Activate!”

His proxybot slapped the device, which glowed orange, onto his back, and in the next second he heard a series of high-pitched whirs and whining machinery as the contraption unfolded itself.

A small timer appeared in the corner of Nic’s HUD counting down the seconds.

Time to make this count.

He ran into battle toward another blue proxybot emerging from one of the two modules he’d scoped out earlier. With the Turretbot’s help, he was able to make short work of the enemy player.

Two more could be found on the other side of a narrow canyon etched into the surface of Planet Gwher by some long-evaporated river. They were taking long-range shots with their Pistols at a target Nic couldn’t see, but he wasn’t really looking either—he was focused on taking down his own targets.

The gunfire was muffled, almost muted compared to the sounds of the Arena or its sim counterpart. He reasoned this was due to the sparser atmosphere on Planet Gwher; there wasn’t as much ambient gas to carry auditory vibrations compared to inhabited worlds or even half-terraformed ones like Ayrus. The stifled noises in proxybots’ ears must have been nothing compared to the deafening roars soldiers of old heard in one of Earth’s many World Wars or the Martian Insurrection.

The Turretbot and the element of surprise both worked in his favor, and despite his low health, he emerged victorious against the two Azure opponents.

The Upgrade Pak broke off his proxybot and fell to the ground, making only a light tap on impact.

Nic took stock of the teams’ standings after his rampage.

NIC [11%] 10|3 JAREK [82%] 1|4 PERRI [94%] 1|4 MAQSUD [100%] 2|4 SHANTI [100%] 1|3 SCARLET: 15 | AZURE: 18

All that and we’re still down by 3, he grumbled internally. While he was happy to see Shanti finally on the board with her first kill, he was concerned that Team Scarlet couldn’t seem to close the gap even after his killing streak. “At least I have another Item Drop ready.”

RTIFIS broke the bad news.

Nic couldn’t help but laugh and shake his head. “Or not. Hey, Team Scarlet,” he said into the team chat. “I noticed we’re having a hard time moving the dial out here.”

“We can’t all be blessed with a fully-loaded Cyclops near the end of its service life, can we, Nic?” Maqsud answered pleasantly.

“Ain’t seen any opponents in a while,” said Jarek. “Still lookin’.”

Nic heard Perri giggle before she replied. “Well, I’ve been off on my own little scavenger hunt...”

He couldn’t help but let an exasperated scoff escape his lips. “Perri, that was not the game plan. I said business as usual! That means tight, focused firefights—”

“...and I just hit the jackpot.”

said RTIFIS.

Nic relented slightly. “Please tell me this will help us turn the tide.”

The excited grin in Perri’s voice was palpable. “Oh, it definitely will.”