Black Sun (Phantom Server: Book #3) Read online

  Black Sun

  a novel

  by Andrei Livadny

  Phantom Server

  Book #3

  Magic Dome Books

  Phantom Server

  Book # 3: Black Sun

  Copyright © Andrei Livadny 2016

  Cover Art © Vladimir Manyukhin 2016

  English translation copyright © Irene Woodhead, Neil P. Mayhew 2016

  Published by Magic Dome Books, 2016

  All Rights Reserved

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This book is entirely a work of fiction. Any correlation with real people or events is coincidental.

  Also by Andrei Livadny:

  Edge of Reality (Phantom Server Book #1)

  The Outlaw (Phantom Server Book #2)

  The Island of Hope

  Other LitRPG books and series by this and other authors:

  NEW RELEASE!

  The Secret of the Dark Forest (The Way of the Shaman Book #3)

  by Vasily Mahanenko

  The Way of the Shaman Books 1, 2 and 3

  by Vasily Mahanenko

  Start the Game (Galactogon Book #1)

  by Vasily Mahanenko

  Phantom Server Books 1, 2 and 3

  by Andrei Livadny

  Perimeter Defense Books 1, 2 and 3

  by Michael Atamanov

  Mirror World Books 1 and 2

  by Alexey Osadchuk

  The Lag (The Game Master Book #1)

  by A. Bobl and A. Levitsky

  More LitRPG books are coming out soon!

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  NEW!

  Attention LitRPG fans and Fantasy genre lovers from Germany!

  The German version of Way of the Shaman, Book #1

  will be released 10th September 2016!

  Pre-order the German version on Amazon!

  Read the opening chapters on Goodreads!

  Table of Contents:

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Epilogue

  Zander’s final stats

  Also by Andrei Livadny:

  About the Author:

  Chapter One

  Darg System. The asteroid belt.

  On board the Founders’ frigate

  Specks of light flickered in Liori’s eyes.

  Her personal module was awash with soft shadows. Candles burned on the little table next to the figurine of the dancing Drow. Droplets of wax thickened in mid-air, piling up fancy ripples of our memories — the memories of amazing universes where we’d faced danger only too eagerly. Carefree, we’d plunged into the thick of events, finding strength in the promise of a safe respawn, knowing that nothing irreversibly fatal could ever happen to us.

  Our real-world lives had flashed past — miserable lives bound with wires, lives that still wriggled, doubled-up, inside in-mode capsules.

  We’d felt young and strong regardless of our age. We seriously believed this would last forever. We had no idea that we’d already trespassed reality.

  A dull jolt disrupted my thoughts. The bulkheads around me echoed with vibration. External view screens sprang to life, revealing the panorama of the Milky Way overflowing with fiery starlight. Slowly it began to shift as our ship was giving all its subsystems one final check in preparation for combat.

  Liori’s fathomless eyes glowed with fear and hope. You wouldn’t think she’d long been dead. This was only her identity matrix, remembered and replicated by the nanites that were connected to my mind expander.

  We’d been absolutely sure that we were testing a “game of the future” featuring exceptional authenticity levels. Daring and fearless we’d faced peril, innocent of the fact that our every step could have become our last. We’d had no idea that our new skills and discoveries were in fact the source of real-life knowledge which our neuroimplants had reported diligently back to Earth.

  Crumbs of knowledge are akin to burning embers. They don’t illuminate your way, only burn your mind.

  “Zander,” with a swipe of her eyes, Liori removed the icy starscape from the screens. The candlelight flared up, momentarily warm, then expired. “It’s time.”

  Direct neurosensory contact mode disabled

  The system message wiped away the mirage of Liori’s room, dissolving her outline into thin air. I was standing by a low railing in cold crimson twilight.

  Far within the depths of the launch deck, a plasma torch exploded in a firework of sparks and tracers, sending long shadows dashing across the bulkheads. To my right, oval slits of power-shielded vacuum docks oozed darkness. One level below lay the delicately chiseled structures of docking pods housing fighter ships where the Haash techs hastily prepared our two Condors for a sortie.

  The gravity elevator shaft popped open behind my back. I turned to the sound just in time to see Charon’s lanky figure being extruded onto the platform.

  A Haash. Sentient Xenomorph. Level 57. Pilot.

  He was clad in an armored suit without a helmet. Short cable sleeves ran down his three-digit hands, ending in glistening connectors that Haash pilots used to tap into their yrobs’ (fighter ships’) systems.

  “Zander?” the giant sentient lizard wheezed, tilting his head out of habit. “Zander, wo’rhoom?”

  I didn’t know that word. Before, I used to treat our communication difficulties as part of the game’s setting. But now I knew for sure: whoever stood behind the avatars of “sentient xenomorphs” were no human beings in any shape or form.

  Charon stood silent waiting for me to answer, his gaze keen. The pupils of his reptilian eyes narrowed. Hot wheezy breath escaped his half-open jaws.

  Finally my semantic processor managed to translate the new word. Apparently, wo’rhoom meant someone who was about to “cross the line”. Or, alternatively, someone who was “on edge”.

  Hah! You could say that! The Haash mentality had no provision for white lies. They’re blunt and straightforward which is probably why they sometimes create this impression of being merciless.

  Another popping sound echoed through the gallery, accompanied by a vectored current of air. “Oops, sorry! Wrong deck!”

  “Max? Come over here, please,” I crouched and asked in my best stern voice, “Who gave you permission to wander about the ship?”

  The boy smiled shyly. “I’m looking for Liori. She promised to come and play with us. It’s so funny when she appears out of the little floaty bits!”

  Charon touched my shoulder, attracting my attention, then forwarded me the alarming image of the boy’s Physical Energy indicator. It was flashing orange.

  Mine by now was barely glowing, deep in the red. Ralph had taken to bed. Jurgen and Frieda were still on their feet. Arbido felt better than the rest of us which made sense: he’d logged in to Phantom Server much later than any of us.

  Max was only five years old. He couldn’t grasp the entire monstrosity of what was happening.

  “Listen, Max,” I said, “would you pl
ease go back to the other guys now? I’d like you all to take your seats and buckle up.”

  “Okay. But what if the girls don’t listen?”

  “Tell them I’ve made you group leader.”

  “No! For real?”

  “Of course. Come on, off you go!”

  Overjoyed, Max hopped and skipped toward the elevator.

  Charon’s gaze followed him, alarmed and compassionate. Gray spots appeared on his rugged hide: a sign of extreme discomposure.

  “We must hurry!” he barked. “You’re all dying, all of you!”

  * * *

  The force escalator took us down to the docking pads.

  We literally moved through time as we floated past numerous machines and devices whose purpose we had as yet failed to discern. Evidence of ancient battles kept drifting into my view: the many traces of fire exposure and the huge ragged patches tacked over the holes in the ship’s hull. After the fall of Argus station, the Founders’ frigate had become our new home — and its depths preserved the memory of its travels through space and of the ancient battles that we might never come to know of.

  Only a few days ago, I’d have paid no heed to any of this. Some fire damage and traces of numerous repairs, so what! It was only a well-conceived game setting... or was it?

  Now I knew that reality was much more complex than that. Our identities had been sent here via hyperspace, then integrated into an alien technosphere. We were capable of interacting with real-world objects, manipulating them even. That was exactly how the Founders had pioneered the Universe. Their technologies were way beyond our understanding, their principles lying in fields yet unknown to humanity. And still they worked.

  Basically, the Darg system was just one insignificant location of the ancient interstellar network. It preserved a dozen derelict space stations ridden by darkness and clusters of debris drifting through space: evidence of bygone battles.

  Our real-world controllers had been using us blindly. The technosphere of the long-gone civilization had suffered a lot of damage. It had remained static until we’d awoken it by collecting the remaining fragments and trying to manipulate them, often crudely and clumsily. Guided by the idea that we were part of a game world whose plot was based on this Founders myth, we hadn’t asked unwanted questions. We’d raided the stations’ perilous depths in search for the ancient AI modules; we’d implanted ourselves with what we’d believed to be cyber upgrades that choked us to death by the impossible authenticity of our experience.

  The outlines of our two Condors and three of the Haash’ yrobs bled through the mist: aerospace fighter ships frozen in the grip of delicate service towers. The flickering of their navigation lights cast a meager glow over their dented cargonite hulls.

  Danezerath and Maurugael — or Danny and Mark as I called them these days, for Haash names were quite a mouthful — waited for us at the launch pad.

  “The Daugoth Clan cargo ship is in position,” Jurgen’s voice echoed in the comm. “Foggs reports his assault groups ready for action.”

  “How’s the Relic’s energy levels?”

  “I brought the reactors up to 12%. That should be enough for three minutes of power shield activation at full combat capacity.”

  “Acknowledged. We’ll try not to allow it to come to that.”

  I turned to the Haash. Themselves ace pilots, today they had to play second fiddle. Storming of the Outlaws’ abandoned base which was now controlled by ancient AIs called for some very special skills which only Liori and I had.

  The situation was lethally simple.

  Thousands of light years away from here, in the fading silence of deserted megalopolises back on Earth, the tinted plastic of our in-mode capsules flickered with the scarlet blinking of emergency lights inside. Our life support systems had been depleted, our body resources drained. Everything seemed abandoned. No one would visit us to replace life support cartridges. Humans had mysteriously disappeared. I couldn’t offer a rational explanation to this, apart from suggesting that human civilization might have been flooded by a torrent of alien technologies.

  It didn’t matter anymore.

  We only had one survival scenario. We had to go digital, just like the Founders had done. We had to sever the last remaining threads connecting us to Earth where the failure of our in-modes meant certain death for us all. It could now happen at any moment.

  “Zander,” Charon walked over to me and added softly, trying hard to find the right words to express his idea. “You need to use your old skills.”

  “You mean as if it’s still a game?”

  He nodded energetically, then headed for his yrob.

  * * *

  The cockpit of my Condor was dark. The long curved shell of the empty pilot’s seat was secured in the grip of its shock absorbers. The onboard life support was off. Traces of recent repairs were everywhere. Many of the screens were still covered in a gossamer web of cracks: we hadn’t yet had time to replace them.

  I lingered.

  Zander, don’t drag it out. Please.

  I picked the tiny fleshfoam lid with my fingernail, revealing a mind expander connector and the dull glimmer of a cybermodule underneath.

  In one practiced movement, I ejected it: the wafer-thin plate covered in neurochips. It felt like ripping a part of my soul out. Liori’s voice faded. The mental sensation of our minds touching had disappeared.

  The external neuronet has been disconnected.

  -5 to your Mnemotechnics skill.

  An instrument panel drive squeaked voraciously as a jury-rigged adapter clasped the offered cybermodule and sucked it into the ship’s electronic innards.

  Gray mist filled the air as nanites left my armored suit and streamed toward the pilot’s seat, forming Liori’s outline. The vague contour of her body began filling out: I could already make out her face and details of her gear.

  “It feels so empty without you,” her whisper scorched my heart. “Empty and cold.”

  No idea how she must have felt. If the ship were shot down now, all that would be left of her would be a handful of chips floating amid the debris. Liori knew this perfectly well. Still, there were no other options. We had to split. The Haash had no Mnemotechnics skill — and on my own I wouldn’t be able to cover the target with Steel Mist. Neither would I be able to blanket their space defense sensors.

  Instinctively I glanced at the translucent icons of my gaming interface. Charon had been right. Nothing had changed there. My char’s levels, skills, abilities — everything functioned normally.

  By learning the truth about ourselves, we had overstepped the boundaries of the game world. The question remained: who kept all the gaming attributes up and running? And why?

  “Zander,” Jurgen’s voice in the speakers exploded the silence, “We’re ready. Where the heck are you?”

  “Go,” Liori whispered. “I’m not saying goodbye.”

  Her image blurred as part of the nanites headed toward the ship’s devices to form the heart of the fighter’s cyber systems.

  * * *

  The docking pod slid out of the frigate’s body and swung round. Launch deck structures flashed across the observation screens.

  An oxygen mist rose, then dissipated slowly as the pod was being pumped free of atmosphere. Just beyond the force field I could make out the outlines of enormous rocks rotating slowly.

  Acceleration threw me back into my seat.

  Glittering with ice, asteroids swarmed toward me. I gave a correctional burst of the thrusters. The asteroids parted, speeding past, revealing a panorama of outer space.

  The brownish sphere of Wearong, the system’s gas giant, lit up the starboard screens. Far-off Darg the size of a pea glistened to my left.

  Switching between view modes, my gaze lingered on the Relic. The Founders’ frigate was shaped as a devilfish, the smooth curves of its six-hundred-foot body ripped by a random pattern of impacts. The ship was leaking radiation: the reactor blocks kept malfunctioning.

&
nbsp; The Relic’s power shields were barely glowing. The system kept streaming me its on-board systems status. Eleven of its electromagnetic coilguns (or ECGs as we called them) were ready for action, as well as one of the directional plasma generators.

  The frigate was covered with wounds and badly patched up.

  Two Wearongs accompanied it: amazing creatures indigenous to the planet of the same name. Capable of sentient actions, they were helping us of their own accord. Their giant translucent bodies glowed weakly as they banked into fiery spirals tracing the frigate’s body, ready to shield it at any moment.

  I came on course.

  Liori’s Condor steered a confident path next to mine. The Haash yrobs followed about fifteen hundred miles in our wake. The Relic’s signature faded as the frigate lagged behind, maneuvering at a respectful distance from the targets. It would only join battle in the case of an emergency.

  Having accelerated, I killed the engines. We now coasted, skirting a thin cloud of gas and dust.

  Data kept pouring into my mind expander. There it was, the asteroid. About three miles long, it looked like a potato riddled with craters. One of the Outlaws’ deserted bases, it had now been taken over by the Founders’ AIs.